


All the little lies

by gabsrambles



Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: AND au, And angst, Angst, F/F
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-10-28
Updated: 2018-08-08
Packaged: 2019-01-25 13:42:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 24,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12532824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gabsrambles/pseuds/gabsrambles
Summary: Supercorp, if Krypton never exploded.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt received: supercorp but krypton never exploded.
> 
> If you want more random one shots, I'm over at Tumblr as [gabsrambles](http://gabsrambles.tumblr.com/). Just search "ramblings".

Kara’s sent away at thirty. A spy for a planet running out of resources heading for one still teaming and untapped to its true potential, but on the brink of environmental destruction. She’s been trained under her aunt’s careful watch, had politics hammered home, learned espionage and fighting and the science behind the whys and hows. She goes not knowing if she’ll come back, and she leaves her planet behind with an ache in her stomach she feels too old for, and a sense of deja vu trailing she doesn’t understand.

She lands a god. 

They knew it would happen, prepared for it–she’s trained in flight and physics and things she’s never second guessed. But when gravel crunches under her boots and she takes off into the sky leaving a trembling ground behind her, the air doesn’t feel like it’s holding her back, but rather buoying her up. There’s a freedom pounding in her chest beyond the expectation of winning a planet’s trust, of getting their technology, of finding a way to get their resources.

But she has a mission. A technology developed within a corporation, something developed by a man with an obsessional mind and Kara needs in. She could storm it, use these powers and rip her way through. It’s addictive, this strength, but it could expose her, expose aliens to a race that has no knowledge of them. It could stop her getting smaller pieces she needs, a way of saving her planet. So she tries for stealth, with a soldiers mind. But he’s impossible to get near him.

Who’s not difficult? His sister.

A woman on the outskirts of their name’s fame, who almost lives within the labs and seems hard, withdrawn, has no friends, lives within her brother’s shadow. Kara follows her to and from Luthor Corp and one day lets them stumble into each other outside a cafe. Kara plasters a smile on her face, her hands on the woman’s elbows and when their eyes catch everything stills, and all Kara can hear is the other woman’s heartbeat and feels like she’s drowning in green. It shouldn’t be like this. She was put though so many simulations to focus with the extra sensitive vision and hearing. She’s coped fine, so far. She’s seen this woman, focused on her features while flying high above the city. But nothing is like being here, now, inches away from her face and caught in her gaze. The woman looks annoyed, for a moment, then her gaze softens before any expression is locked away.

Kara remembers herself.

“Sorry.” She lets her smile turn sheepish. “I didn’t see you.”

But she did see Lena, and now she can’t tear her eyes away.

It takes weeks, but Kara befriends her. She forgets, when they’re opposite each other in a bustling cafe that she’s doing it gain her trust and then betray her. She forgets Krypton, her mother, her father, her training. The smile on Kara’s face is real and as Lena Luthor’s walls start to crumble between them, Kara yearns to crawl a little closer. One day, Lena leans against her slightly while they walk near a park. Another, she laughs, the sound rich and warm and almost a little rusty, like she’s not used to doing it. She bites her lip when Kara says hello, and Kara’s stomach heats and something throbs low down. In the lab Kara visits her in carrying dinner in a pizza box because Lena always forget to eat, Lena steps right into her space and kisses her. It’s quick, chaste, and she pulls back with her eyes wide and like she surprised even herself. And Kara forgets she’s there for intel, to snoop as much as she can, to take extra steps to get what she needs and instead drops the pizza box on a bench and takes Lena’s lab coat in her fists and pulls her closer.

Kara’s never had time for this, before. On Krypton she’s been training since she was fifteen. Every moment in her life she was being moulded into something taught to be single-minded: to get this one thing. To get their final hope on Krypton.

But now she wonders why she wasn’t doing _this_  all the time. Or, really, why she didn’t start doing this with Lena sooner.

Her mouth is soft, warm, her tongue slides over Kara’s like she knows exactly what she’s doing and Lena pushes back until the small of Kara’s back hits a bench. They laugh softly between kisses, hands slipping under shirts, palms grazing skin and maybe, just maybe, Kara can have this, can have Lena  _and_  her planet.

It’s too easy after that. She lets it drag for another week. Pushes the mission to the back of her mind, and instead lazes in bed with Lena, sheets wrapped around their legs, kicked to the floor, skin slick with sweat and discovers a side to herself, to Lena, that she’d never imagined but adores with that part of herself that isn’t all about the mission. Then after a week, sick with the guilt, sick at the softness in Lena’s eye, Kara swipes Lena’s pass in the lab and let’s herself through, beeps through room after room after room. She can still feel Lena from that morning, the sun hazy on their skin and Lena’s arm heavy over Kara’s middle. The press of her lips to Kara’s neck as she woke up, sleepy and warm and breasts naked against her own as she slid her leg between Kara’s.

But Kara has no choice. Her planet is nearing a point it won’t be able to come back from, closer than this planet, and Lex Luthor, and his obsessed brain, seems to have developed something that can save them. Krypton looked for ways beyond deceit, looked for a way to make a plea, a deal–this planet showed little ability to treaty with anything foreign. And despite some of the good she’s seen, despite something as good as  _Lena_ , Kara hasn’t seen anything that makes her think otherwise. The other option, war, was dismissed immediately. And so had begun Kara’s training. 

All for this.

The final room holds just a computer, filled with blueprints. With an understanding of something even Krypton is lacking. The saving grace to Kara’s planet is from an alien, and all the brain power on her planet hasn’t gotten as close as Lex Luthor. Not when Kryptonians clearly showed they never understood it all to let it get this far.

The file loads easily and Kara turns, ready to leave, to find wide green eyes blinking at her. She was so focussed she missed Lena following her. Missed the footsteps she knows, the heartbeat she could pick out of a crowd.

She can’t miss the utter, heartbreaking betrayal on Lena’s face. The way her eyes shutter, the way she crosses her arms, like stealing herself for a blow. And Kara stands, swallows, the information burning a hole in her pocket and she has to go.

The time is up. Her planet is a ticking time bomb and this could help them save it. Could save millions and millions of lives.

But Lena is staring at her.

“Lena–”

“Don’t.” Lena juts her chin, just a little. “I should have known you were getting close to me just for something.” Kara would almost think she imagines the slight tremble to her bottom lip. “No one ever wants a Luthor.”

“I  _did_.” Kara’s voice breaks on the last word, and she stalks forward, relieved when Lena doesn’t pull away. She doesn’t step closer either though, so Kara pauses in front of her, aching to pull her in. “ _I_  do.”

“You wanted this.” She juts her chin at the computer, her eyes hard. “You don’t have to lie to me.” 

“I–” Because what can Kara say? She does want this. Need this. She never meant for the rest of this to happen.

“Who are you?” Lena cocks her head. “ _What_  are you?”

And Kara stills, because how can Lena  _know_.

“Say it, Kara. If that’s your real name.” Lena’s cheeks are slashed with red and her eyes are red and Kara wants to cry. She doesn’t feel like a soldier right now, like a spy, like the most trained Kryptonian in history. She feels like a child, a girl who’s betrayed someone she never wanted to but set out to do so in every action she took. “Say you got close to me because I was your way in.”

She won’t lie anymore. She can’t. And Kara feels like something is breaking in her chest. “I got close to you because you were my way in.” The words whisper out, but Lena closes her eyes like they’re a slap, harsh truth. Like she wishes she hadn’t asked for them. “I did Lena.” Her voice is so hoarse. “But I never meant to fall–”

Lena steps forward, crashes their lips together. Kara cups her cheeks and Lena steps in even closer, their bodies flush, her teeth nipping at Kara’s lips. It starts furious, angry, biting, but quells, slows to soft touches, brushes of their lips. Lena pulls away with a shuddering breath, and Kara wants to pull her back, but has no right, none at all. She lets her hands fall away, finger tips grazing the softness of her cheeks, her neck, until they rest against Lena’s furiously beating heart. Lena rests their foreheads together for just a second.

“Don’t you dare say that, after all of this,” Lena whispers.

Kara nods. She nods, then steps back, and can’t look at her again. Can’t see the heartbreak in Lena’s eyes. Instead, she walks past Lena and leaves her behind. 

And this time, as she leaves a planet behind her, she lets the sobs break her apart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I wrote another chapter? Your comments inspired me, what can I say :D

_“I never meant to fall-”_

Those words play around and around Lena’s head and make her breath catch like they’re new—like she’s back in the lab with betrayal tasting bitter on her tongue and Kara’s desperate, broken eyes so close to her own.

That kiss hadn’t tasted of betrayal, though. It had tasted of grief, thick in her throat, of something Kara’s words never got to finish that Lena thinks she may have swallowed anyway.

It’s been eight months, two weeks and four days.

Three times the amount of time Lena even knew Kara. It’s weak, all of this. Her mother would call her weak. Her brother—he wouldn’t. But he lives in his work, constantly obsessed with the new thing and the next and the next. Sometimes, it’s as if he’s missing something—as if he can’t function without something to obsess over, and inventions are failing him. Because he achieves it, improves it, and then that is when there’s something dark in his eye. Like he’s lost now he’s without it.

She wonders, at times, if he was meant for something darker. Something bigger. Something to fall back on, an obsession that would never end.

And then she wonders where that thought came from, and why it felt like truth, like something she can almost grasp, an idea hovering in the background too far to touch but hauntingly close.

That’s how Kara feels, now.

Like something that never really happened.

There are days Lena thinks it didn’t. There’s no trace of her, anywhere. If there was, Lena would have found it. She searched the name Kara gave her, and came up nothing. A phone she used was a burner.

There was no apartment. Lena never went back to one with her, something she never thought of—Kara just liked coming to hers.

Lena runs programs. She hires a top PI.

Kara is a ghost. There is nothing. Not a drop of information.

A figment of her imagination. Maybe what takes over her brother, something deep rooted in him, is in her too and Kara really never happened. There was no smile that sent Lena’s heart pulsing, thumping against her ribcage. There was no easy laugh that Kara gave, no soft fingers that fell against Lena’s jaw and cradled it like she was something precious.

There was no light in this life that Lena moves through, keeping steps with a mother that can not love her, following orders from a brother who does but does so badly. Forgetfully. Errantly.

Lena spent so long in her life feeling behind it all, never enough, weak, soaked in lies and games and hard looks that Kara hit her like a train. Unexpected, painful, and dragging her in a direction she never meant to go.

It was so fleeting, that feeling Kara lit in her chest. Something buoyant, something light and true and—it was so fleeting. Surely it never really happened.

But then there are the mornings she wakes and can still smell Kara on her pillow. That smell of shampoo and sunlight in summer that followed her everywhere, like she was soaked in it. At night, she still looked almost golden. Lena would lay with the air cool on her skin, a leg thrown over Kara’s hip, and run her hand through Kara’s hair. Kara’s eyes would close and she’d almost fall asleep at the feeling of Lena’s fingers raking. Lena would lay and watch the movement, wondering if the sun was catching on her fingertips, something to carry of Kara the next day until she saw her again.

That memory is so vivid it can’t be anything but real.

And the photo on her phone. The one she snapped, the only one. Kara face down in the pillows, the light falling through Lena’s window and a sheet wrapped around her legs, but that’s it. Hair that spills out from her neck, skin that Lena had traced and kissed and grazed her teeth over the night before. An arm thrown over her head. 

A photo that she tries to make herself delete.

She never can.

She should though. Or print it out to have the satisfaction of destroying it. Some kind of closure to this raw feeling stripping her down and hardening her that never leaves her. 

_I never meant to fall-_

Neither did Lena. And here she is, alone and aching and feeling like her mind is slipping away from her. She has her work. She has her apartment. She has her research and her lab and her mother who never really looks her in the eye and a brother who can’t seem to leave his office.

And a memory of a betrayal so deep that angry thing in her grows and grows and grows.

 

* * *

Kara left Krypton a soldier, she arrived to Earth a god, and she returns to Krypton a hero.

There’s something bitter in her chest at it all. This planet that got itself into this position and relied on thievery to get itself out, unable to truly understand what it did to get there.

She tells herself that’s why she’s bitter, this nugget in her chest that’s brittle and threatening to shatter and send all its little pieces inside her. Shaped by the aching look in green eyes and the sound of a voice that never really expected anything better for herself than betrayal from the one person she let close.

There’s a medal pinned to her chest. One invented for saving a world that Kara, so unlike herself, thinks maybe didn’t deserve to be saved. Did they not have all their chances? Did they not ignore too many warning signs? Did they not get too arrogant? Did it not fail to save itself?

That something bitter is eating at her.

She wakes at night not with the memory of empty space all around her. Of feeling alone in a pod too small. Of being sent like a sacrifice. Of being sacrificed before that in a way that ruined even more, because who has the ability to do what she did to Lena? Ruined so young because: no life for you, young Kara. Just training. Just missions. Just studying a culture to fit in and achieve an aim. Learning to manage powers perfectly that she should never get to have in the first place. The only hope. Something heavy on her shoulders as she grew and ached and dreamed for something softer, a life more gentle. A connection with more than people of war and plans and failures.

She wakes at night with the memory of Lena’s fingers in her hair. Not of the passion that pushed them together again and again, at least, not often of that. But of the softness. Of the way Lena’s eyes, so guarded and gated and bricked over, lit up at the sight of Kara walking towards her with pizza. They way those eyes showed snaps of emotion. Emotion that left Kara’s stomach aching and a lump in her throat she’d never been able to explain. Brick by brick Kara had plucked something out of Lena until just crumbled dust remained around their feet and then Kara left her with just that rubble. Because she was there for a mission, not for this woman that kissed like she surprised herself, or feelings Kara had no right to feel.

Not when she’d based it all on lies.

She wakes with those memories, then drowns in the guilt of it all. In the guilt of that last kiss, the anger and hurt and, Rao, understanding that poured from Lena into her and Kara steps onto her balcony like the overheated air of her planet can do anything to stop the shame bounding through her blood.

She misses the breezes on Earth. She misses lifting herself off the ground into the clear blue sky and the way the air moved over her skin, the weightless feeling that came with it. She misses the sounds of traffic and life. She misses the animals she flew to see, still there and not eradicated by humans, not yet. The endless green. The life.

Not like those on Krypton.

She misses Lena.

Duty presses down on her, lessons and honour and all that she’s learned as soon as she was able to start school. Her aunt’s hand, heavy on her shoulder. Her fathers teachings. Her mother’s law.

Her planet’s expectations.

It all clashes in her head and she closes her eyes, feet stuck to the floor beneath them in a way that shouldn’t now feel wrong, and all of that leaves and instead she sees Lena’s hesitant smile, the first time she gave one to Kara. Slow and unassuming. Unexpected. 

Undeserved.

A tentative trust Kara could feel. 

One she took and shattered, cracked over the ground at their feet and left behind her with sobs catching in her own chest. 

Kara makes an appeal. To return to Earth. To make sure they’re warned of the direction their own planet is taking. That people speak of acting on it there but are too slow. No one listens, no one takes it seriously.

That even with the answer in their hands they may leave it too late.

Much like Krypton. Which may yet get pulled back from the brink but can never go back, never claim what it once was. The species extinct, plants and animals. A people forever changed. A glory that people destroyed and will have to live with forever.

They are just lucky they get to live with it.

The council screams no. The hypocrisy in a decision that the other planet is not their responsibility. 

Duty demands Kara accepts that decision, but instead she hears a laugh in an empty lab over noodles in a box and chopsticks in her hands. She feels the fragility of Lena’s jaw under her fingertips, can hear the way her heart reacts to everything Kara does.

She feels the slam of Lena’s betrayed look like she’s hit again.

And Kara straightens her shoulders and tells them all they’re hypocrites. That she’ll go alone.

A solo mission to save a planet that may not listen to her.

They say yes. Somehow, they do. She is given a week on the planet. Her aunt eyes her and her parents don’t understand. But it’s a yes.

That feeling of deep deja vu sits in her bones as her pod flies away, leaving Krypton behind to try and save itself with technology Kara brought them.

She sucks in a breath, and wonders at her own selfishness. That if she wants to save this planet because she should, because it’s the right thing to do.

Or because she wants to return to Lena Luthor.

She programs the pod and leans back and stars blur around her and she hits hyperspace, no dread at leaving her planet behind this time.

She is selfish.

Because she knows she just wants to return to Lena.

Who may never want to look at her again.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm taking all of the liberties when it comes to time, space travel, and alternate universes. Butterfly wings and tsunami, ya know? Lack of Krypton exploding and ripple effects and things that are just convenient for fun and drama. Just roll with it ;) Don't think too much or you'll get a headache like the one I got trying to figure it out.

Earth is the same.

It’s been two months for Kara since she left.

More has passed here, she knows that. The math is in her brain whether she wants it to be or not, pushing against every thought and mocking her.Facts impossible to ignore. It’s easy maths, the simple things she learned when she was young enough her feet still only managed to scrape along the ground when she sat in her chair.

It doesn’t matter.

The length of time is unimportant.

She’s here to make a planet listen.

Maybe, to make Lena listen.

To two different things, it’s true.

But regardless of the time that’s passed, Earth is the same. The tang of the air on her tongue is clear, clean. White clouds dot the sky, stretched blue and seemingly endless above it.

What always sunk its claws in Kara, made this planet something of an addiction--besides lips that kissed Kara like she was a lifeline--were the colours. That blue, of the sky. The different, many shades of the sea. The browns and blacks and reds of the earth, rich and teeming with life. It _grows_ things here.

But the green, the glittering, depth of greens that are everywhere. Trees and leaves and plants. Forests. Endless, endless forests.

Eyes that went from guarded, to open, to broken.

Kara has a little bit of a thing for green.

Now, after two months of regret and guilt slicing her open when she tries to sleep, two months of wanting to go back in time and find another way to get what she needed—except not, because that would mean never knowing Lena at all, and that just feels so wrong. Two months of it all, she’s here.

She has no idea what to do.

She has a mission, to make this world realise the doom it’s steadily marching towards. To perhaps get the genius behind the blueprints that will save her own planet to realise that he’s actually on to something.

 _Discretion_ her aunt had warned her.

 _Quietly_ she’d said.

 _Subtle pushes._ She sat next to Kara at the base Kara spent more time in then her own home, a presence that Kara always clung to. Full of knowledge. A fury to save her planet that she’d infected Kara with. _Aliens are unknown to this world. They are there, quietly. But so far the general public remain unaware. They are not ready_.

Subtle. Kara could do subtle.

It’s fortunate, that the company that could possibly make these changes is the one linked with Lena.

It’s tempting to watch her. To gauge her, first. To pry and pick and find out. She’s desperate to see her, now she’s so close. Lena isn’t lightyears away now. She’s miles away. That’s it.

If Kara concentrated, she’d be able to hear Lena’s heartbeat.

But Kara betrayed her already. Used her for a gain and left her behind and she won’t do that again. Won’t invade her privacy or step where she’s not wanted.

She can’t. Not to Lena. Not to herself.

So she goes to Luthor Corp and stares straight up. People bustle by her on the street, shoulders nudging her as looks up at this building she spent weeks in but felt like her home on Earth.

Second home. Lena’s apartment was home.

Which is why she can’t go to her apartment instead. Invading Lena’s space on private turf.

The street smells like the bakery across the road she used to pick up something for Lena to eat, the rich pastries and the coffee, black and steaming and hot.

Just step inside. That’s all she has to do.

She chickens out right then and goes to the bakery instead. Gets the coffee and the pastry Lena loved. Then she’s back on the street and there’re no other excuses, now. She sucks in a breath.

What if Lena isn’t here? What if she doesn’t want to see Kara?

She walks in and heads to the lobby’s desk, eyed by security as she does so.

“I’m here to see Lena Luthor?”

She expects to be sent to the labs or to be told to wait. Instead, she’s sent to an elevator. Told a floor and the name of a receptionist to speak to.

It’s been a minute in here, and already she’s thrown off balance.

On the top floor, she stops be the receptionists desk and gives her name. She considers lying so she can at least get in, stop Lena from having the ability to send her away. Instead she just gives her first name. The last she’d given Lena had been a lie. 

She doesn't want to see Lena through a deception, this time.

Lena will know it's her, with just the first name.

Somehow, she’s told to go in immediately.

The door swishes open, the letters CEO on it. Lena’s name is under it and nothing makes sense. Kara picked Lena as her way in when she arrived because everyone underestimated her. Especially her family.Ignored. Looked down on. A quiet research mouse.

Everything freezes when she steps into the office.

 

* * *

 

Her eyes are the same.

Ocean blue.

Sky blue.

All of the blue.

Lena thought she’d be able to handle this. Sometimes, she thinks she’s been waiting. Like she knew Kara would return, Lena’s heart tattered and torn in her hand and held out like that makes it all right.

If Kara had actually felt anything for her at all.

_I never meant to fall—_

Shit, she looks just the same. Lena stands, her hands flat on the table. She juts her chin. She’s the CEO. She’s the youngest CEO this company has ever seen.

Even if her mother is really pulling all the strings.

“Kara.” She has no idea how her voice doesn’t shake.

She looks the same, and she’s staring at Lena like she’s seen a ghost. As if she isn’t the one that chose to waltz back in after stealing and manipulating and lying and then disappearing.

“Lena.” She smiles, and even that’s the same, and either Kara is a fantastic actor or some of what she did was real. “It’s been awhile.”

Lena huffs the smallest of mirthless laughs, then.

“Almost three years.”

Kara’s throat bobs as she swallows, like the words are a blow.

From her seat opposite her, Sam stands and Lena almost panics for a second—she’d all but forgotten she was there. These two in a room together are not something she's ever imagined.

“Kara—this is Sam Arias. She’s my vice president.”

For the shortest of moments, when Sam has turned around and walked up to Kara, hand held out, Lena thinks Kara won’t even take it. Won’t shake it. She’s almost gone pale, that golden sheen to her skin dimmed. But then she takes the hand and shakes it.

“Nice to meet you.”

“Likewise.”

And Sam looks over her shoulder at Lena, gives that coy smile. “I’ll see you tomorrow for the ten o’clock, Lena. I’ll have everything prepared.”

Lena nods and she’s gone and it’s just Kara and her.

Kara, who’s here.

In front of her.

The gap is closed and she’s opposite her at the desk. Lena thinks she may shake, so she sinks into her seat and Kara sits in the one Sam just vacated.

She offers a smile, and it throws Lena’s entire world off of its axis. “This is different to the labs.”

It is. Everything is different. Everything is different but everything is the same and she wants nothing but to sink to her knees in front of Kara and lay her head in her lap. Let Kara run her fingers through her hair while Lena tells her everything that’s happened, that’s happening.

“It is.” Her voice is cold and Lena doesn’t even care.

Kara holds out a paper packet, thick with grease, a coffee. “I brought you this. In case you still, you know. Forget to eat.”

And Kara is still smiling, so softly. She puts it on the desk and Lena is struck with the urge to throw it at her, because the idea that Kara remembers her order, that Kara thinks of her, is almost too much.

“Did you need something from our research labs?” Lena asks, like silk. Like silk and daggers, a trick she learned from her mother. It hits Kara like it hits Lena when her mother uses it, she can see. The subtle wince, mostly hidden. “You don’t need to fuck me this time.”

Silence.

It’s crass. Lena knows that. She’s never crass. She’s clever. She uses her words well. She can play a game or three all at the same time. But that angry thing Kara left in her chest pulls out a side to her she doesn’t like very much.

“I…”

Kara says nothing after that, and they stare at each other and Lena doesn’t know if she should laugh or cry. She thinks she could do both. Because that comment was fair and unfair all at once. And Kara knows it.

Finally, “I’m here, because I have a mission." Of course she is. Kara's looks her right in the eye then, piercing. "And I believe you are the only one who can help me.”

So she _is_ here because she needs something. That angry thing bubbles, tastes bitter inside her. Disappointment, at Kara’s need or Lena’s own pathetic expectations, boils in her chest.

“Get out, Kara.”

And Kara does, she stands up slowly, like she was waiting for it, and leaves, as quietly as if she was never here.

Much like the last time.

And Lena hates herself, because the sob catches and falls from her the second the door is shut

 

* * *

 

That went almost just as Kara thought it would. Excluding two points.

 _Sam Arias_.

And the twist in her stomach at the shuttered look on Lena’s face. Because really, what did Kara expect after it all? She hears the sob through the door and almost pauses. Almost turns around, chokes on her own apologies.

She wants to go back. She wants to fall in front of Lena and tell her everything. Beg her forgiveness. Seek something from her she has absolutely no right too. Because besides all her training, besides the solider that lives in her head, Kara is selfish and Lena is the one thing that has ever made her want to act on that selfishness.

But first, _Sam Arias_.

She follows the heartbeat she memorised. It wasn’t hard to do so, it’s distinct. Easy to do so. Recognisable. 

The sound leads her outside, down an alley, around a corner out of anyone’s view.

And there she stands, back straight and arms folded, staring straight at Kara. Waiting for her, just like Kara knew she would. Her hand still aches from that handshake in the office.

She doesn’t waste a second, she flies forward and slams Sam against the walls, brick crumbling from the impact, her forearm over Sam’s throat and Sam doesn’t even flinch, just stares straight at her.

“Kara Zor-El, of the House of El.”

The Kryptonian is perfect.

“Sa’am Van-Dar of the House of the Protected—or is it Sam now?”

And then Kara’s against the opposite wall, dust flying and her head hitting the wall with a crack.

“Did you think you were the only Kryptonian here?” Sam asks.

“You disappeared years ago,” Kara hisses. “You were one of the top recruits and they said you defected.”

Sam stares right at her, head cocked, as if deciding something. She lets her arm drop and they stand in the alley, surrounded by the smell of dumpster and the muffled sound of traffic.

“I did defect. Why are you here, Kara Zor-El?”

“Why are you working with Lena Luthor, Sa’am Van-Dar?”

Sam just stares at her.

And everything is different, now. Complicated further. Answers are needed. Sam is here, when almost fifteen years ago she went AWOL and disgraced their training, disgraced Kara’s aunt, disgraced Krypton. Disgraced The House of the Protected.

But piece by piece, Kara is learning to realise that maybe Krypton has disgraced itself.

And she needs answers. And to complete her mission.

But in her chest, that ache is spreading, it’s in her lungs. She just wants to go to Lena, who wants nothing to do with her. It’s been three years and one unforgivable betrayal for Lena.

It’s been two months and a betrayal that cost her more than she can ever explain, to Kara. It cost her Lena. Her faith in her training. In her family. In her very planet.

Too much.

 _You don’t have to fuck me this time_.

Kara almost throws up.

“You look like you need a drink, Kara Zor-El."

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your comments are the best things ever seriously thank you.  
> Also, it's been three years. Stuff has happened.  
> Please don't try to space math as you will see how badly I suck at it. :D

They end up in another alley, on the other side of town. It’s dark and dingy and there’s more than the smell of dumpster, this time. Kara raises her eyebrows at Sa’am— _Sam_ —and Sam just raises her own back.

It’s like being with a ghost, with a figment of her imagination. It’s been twelve years since Kara walked into training, with the ten left in her squad, and Sam was gone.

You don’t ask a lot of questions when you’re a soldier, when you’ve been told since you could understand the words that you have one mission in this life, to save your planet, your people—to save everything.

It’s a strange sensation, when you’ve done that and you’re not sure what to live for anymore.

But Kara had Astra, and Astra always let Kara get away with more than she should have.

And even then, Kara didn’t get much when it came to Sa’am Van-Dar.

Just the few words.

_She’s defected. She won’t be coming back, Kara._

And she didn’t. They weren’t the best of friend, Sa’am and Kara. But they were friends, for what they both understood of the term. They’d schooled together, trained together, lived in the same barracks and been chosen for the special squad together.

And then Sa’am was gone.

And now Kara is with Sam and Krypton is so far away even she can barely comprehend it.

There’s a nondescript door and Sam taps something on it. A panel opens and a word is spoken and Kara is following her in.

It’s just a bar.

Like any human bar.

Like most bars on most planets really.

Except there isn’t a human in sight. There are aliens dotted around, Aellons, a Tormock, Halla’s—there are aliens who could almost, _almost_ pass as human, and aliens who never could.

None of them spare a glance for the two of them and Sam nods at the bartender and holds up two fingers before she leads Kara to a booth in the back. The seat crackles under her, old seat split and spilling stuffing in places. The tacky tabletop sticks to her jacket when she leans her elbows on it and just stares at Sam.

Who stares back.

There’s an itch, in the back of Kara’s throat, tingling down her nerves, sitting in the tips of her fingers. She wants to see Lena. She doesn’t know what this is, this never-ending push, this desire, constantly, to be near her. To be able to keep her eyes on Lena, to want to trace those tingling fingertips down her cheek, cup her jaw. There’s a want for more, of course, a desire that drags in her stomach, the need to be as close as possible, to watch her come undone. But the desire for quiet? For gentle breathing and the brush of lips against her cheek?

She has no idea what that means and what she’s supposed to do with it. Not when she so royally, unforgivably, fucked up.

All for a planet that maybe didn’t deserve what she took it.

 _You don’t have to fuck me this time_.

The words feel like they’re tearing at her lungs.

But she squashes it all down at that final though, because it’s all being tugged in two directions. Towards Lena, and then towards something else. Something heavy and dark and smothering her chest.

Something Sam is linked to.

Something Kara accidentally started suspecting about a planet she served so blindly. Saved so blindly.

Sam is considering her. Taking her in.

Kara lets her. Juts her chin, just slightly. Somehow, Sam is harder and softer all at once. She was always guarded. Careful. Watchful. She was fast, back then. One of the fastest. She was better than Kara, in combat. Something raged under her skin, something sat in her and when Sam unleashed it, none of them stood a chance.

Astra used to step into their training, when she wasn’t running it, with other generals, commanders. Their eyes always stayed on two of their squad, training for special missions: Kara and Sam. Sam was younger, but still drew their attention.

And then Sam was gone.

Two drinks are put down in front of them, the glass thudding with a hollow sound, and Kara swallows, Sam’s gaze off of her and on the woman who put down their drinks.

“Thanks, M’gann.”

The woman smiles at her. “No problem.” Her eyes are on Kara and there’s a heavier look. She’s being sized up. “Who’s this?”

“An old friend,” Sam answers, bringing her drink to her lips.

“Interesting.”

And then M’gann is gone and Kara lifts up the drink. It smells awful, like the the alcohol she’d drunk as part of the camaraderie they all tried to muster even in their special ops squad where none of that was encouraged. All it ever really did was make Kara melancholy and then give her a headache to last hours the next day.

She takes a sip and manages not to wince.

There’s so much sitting on this table, filling the air between them. So many questions burning on Kara’s tongue.

“Do they know you’re here, this time?” Sam asks.

Straight to the point, then.

“Did you know I was here before?”

Sam cocks her head. “Is this how it’s going to go, trading questions with questions until neither of us have any answers?”

Kara almost smiles, because Sam is, amusement stamped across her features. She’s been gone so long—what connection does she have to Krypton anymore? Why leave in the first place?

“Okay.” Sam runs a fingertip around the rim of her glass, pensive. “I did know you were here last time. It was me that got information to Krypton about the Luthor blueprints.”

It’s only Kara’s training that keep her surprise hidden. “Why help us after abandoning your training, everything you had?”

Sam laughs, something mirthless in it even as she grins, eyes vacant of the smile. The grin fades and something angry is left behind. “I felt I owed a debt. Now it’s even.” She is still studying Kara. “I wasn’t surprised it was you they sent.”

A debt?

“Why?” Kara asks instead.

Because she was Astra’s niece? Because she was of the House of El?

“Because you were the best.”

“So were you.”

Sam gives a nod. “So, I gave _you_ something?”

That was true. “Yes, they know I’m here.”

“Another mission?”

“One of my own making. They almost didn’t let me go.”

“What is the mission?”

“You left behind your access to that information when you defected.” Kara takes a longer sip and Sam raises her own glass at those words.

“Why, Kara Zor-El, do I get the feeling this mission is not why you are really here?”

Sam doesn’t know. She _can’t_ know. But she somehow knows _something_ is not as it should be and discomfort squirms in Kara’s stomach.

“Why are you working for Lena Luthor?”

Sam laughs again. “You’re stuck on that question when it’s the least important. I’ve worked for that company since I graduated. I’m very good at what I do—it’s almost as if I’ve had years of training.” She actually winks, her voice light, and Kara can’t figure her out. “I’m not there under orders, Kara. Like I said, I was there first—the only reason you ended up there was because of me. This city is my home.” Her voice is light, but she’s looking at Kara like she doesn’t trust her, like she’s waiting for Kara to do something. “This _planet_ is my home. That company is my workplace and Lena is my friend. You’ve come to Earth like you belong here, like it’s just a stepping stone for your needs.” And her tone is no longer light. She knocks back the rest of her drink. “Do what you came to do and go back to Krypton like the pet you are.”

And then she’s standing. And gone.

And Kara has no idea what the hell just happened.

 

* * *

 

Kara was never supposed to come back.

That was something Lena told herself, all the time. Kara took what she needed and was gone. She wasn’t coming back.

And in three years of telling herself that, she still never truly believed it.

Sam messages her asking if tonight is good and Lena says yes, because she feels like she can’t breathe, like it’s all eating her alive. She goes out and meets Sam in a bar near Lena’s apartment.

Sam.

A friend, to a girlfriend in college, to an ex, to a friend, to a friend with something else at times.

But still always a friend.

Sam has her drink waiting and somehow, Lena is expecting questions about Kara. Her entrance engulfed Lena’s day; Lena feels tattooed with it. But Sam doesn’t even mention her—she has no idea what Kara is— _was_ —to Lena.

The air is gone from every room and Lena drinks her drink too fast, four big gulps and it’s gone. Sam asks if she wants to go back to Lena’s. It’s so tempting to say yes. Would be so easy, like the other times.

Sam would easy, as always. A pattern she knows. Something familiar in this ladder she’s climbed to somewhere she doesn’t know at all. After a day of feeling like all she’s done is trip.

She shakes her head though and Sam nods and they stay in the bar, and Lena has another then another until she knows the next day is going to suck, a hangover lurking over all her edges. Stupid to do with her mother coming the next day. Just the thought of that makes her have another.

Logic is gone.

Sam is strange. There, but not. She’s somewhere else, and it’s odd when Sam is always just so _present_. But Lena can’t fault her when she herself still in that office with rage in her blood and an ache in her heart and she almost feels like she’s going to choke on the sob in her throat because three years have passed, but it feels like nothing and all it took was five minutes in a room with Kara to completely derail her.

Sam gets her home and makes her drink a glass of water, tucks her in.

Always a friend, no matter what else. She drops a kiss on Lena’s forehead and Lena barely hears the door snick closed as Sam leaves.

She dreams of blue eyes and wordless promises. Of the way the sun spilled through curtains. The way she was touched, once, like she might break.

She wakes up as hungover as she expected and a hand thrown out searching for Kara, something she’s not done in forever and it leaves a sadness sitting deep in her gut.

It’s only five am, but she gets up anyway and can’t bring herself to look at the other side of the bed.

 

* * *

 

The next day, Kara goes back to Luthor Corp.

She has no choice. It’s day two of seven, now, and she has to leave once she hits seven and never come back. So why did she want to come? To save the planet, yes. But she came for Lena—to what, leave again?

The conversation with Sam plays over and over in her head and she knows she’s missing pieces she desperately needs. Important ones, pieces that keep the picture from being clear while they’re gone. Some of them come from the years ago on Krypton, some from here—until she gets them, she won’t know. And she shouldn’t care. Sam has nothing to do with why she came back.

Or doesn’t she?

There’s something there, digging at her. Kara wants to know. The distaste that’s grown over time, so slowly Kara didn’t notice it until she was back on her own dying planet after being gone.

But first, she needs to try again with Lena.

 _You don’t have to fuck me this time_.

The words are like a knife, each time. The bland way they were said, the tilt of Lena’s head. The look in her eye.

Like she believed that that’s what it had all been.

She has no idea that Kara delayed that mission as much as she could for one more morning to wake up next to her. One more kiss. One more laugh from Lena that always sounded a little tattered, a little broken—but less and less so as time had passed.

An accident, but one she can’t bring herself to regret.

But she needs to try again, to make Lena listen to Kara’s mission. To why she’s here. Kara was given a week but it was expected she would complete this sooner.

It should be easy, really, to make a planet listen to the news of it’s own destruction. It’s half aware, anyway. The technology exists, locked in Luthor Corp.

Kara just wants to see Lena. Even if she doesn’t deserve to.

The ride up the elevator is slow. It’s as if they stop at every floor, people in suits getting on and off, harried researchers in lab coats barely looking up from their tablets as they move between floors. When she’s finally at the top, the secretary’s desk is empty and Kara pauses at the door.

She can’t help but hear what’s going on on the other side.

“You will get this moving faster, Lena.”

“Yes, mother.”

“I mean it. Your brother’s notes should have made this happen by now. Cadmus needs it. This planet is being invaded, bit by bit, and this company _will_ go down for having saved the world. You were put in his position for your looks and ability to stay afloat, that’s all. You _will_ get this done.”

“ _Yes_ mother.”

There’s no one on the floor, miraculously, so Kara flies back to the elevator and starts walking slowly from there, just as the office door opens and an impeccably dressed woman steps out, head high. She barely glances at Kara and Kara only just manage to stop herself from pressing the woman to the wall and letting her fist draw back and slam forward. Kara waits for a minute at the desk, fiddles with a stapler, with the pens in a holder clearly made by a small child.

What is Cadmus.

What is Luthor Corp, really?

Who is Lena, in all of this?

And how long have they known about aliens on Earth?

Finally, she knocks on the door. The “come in” is distant.

Kara steps in and Lena is standing in the doorway to her balcony, a glass of something in her hand. The cold look on her face hardens even more and Kara’s stomach aches to see it like it was the day she left, before Lena had caught her. When they’d been in the lab and Lena had lit up when Kara came in as a surprise. Had kissed her, pressed against a cold metal bench while Kara plucked the pass out of Lena’s pocket.

Everything they have is built on lies.

“I, uh, saw your mother in the hallway.”

Lena takes a long sip, ice clinking—the sound is almost grating, too loud in Kara’s ears, hard to block out. She huffs a breath and turns, walking out onto the balcony.

She doesn’t tell Kara to come with, but she doesn’t tell her to leave, either. So Kara follows—she’d follow Lena anywhere, it feels.

It feels that way, when really it was Kara that led her down a path littered with her own deceptions.

She stands next to Lena, buries her hands in her coat pockets and makes sure there are a few feet between then. She could step closer. Let their elbows rub, some kind of connection to centre herself.

She shouldn’t, so she doesn’t.

Lena’s glass is pressed to her sternum and she stares out at the city, her jaw clenched tight. She was always like this after seeing her mother. Kara only saw it happen three times: if she came into the lab, and once when Kara went to Lena’s apartment right after her mother had left. Kara never actually _met_ her. She didn’t want to, either. She didn’t know if she could control herself around someone who left Lena like _this_.

Lena, who is so strong and intelligent and quick.

Who is so fragile, underneath it all.

“It’s been so long,” Lena finally says. “I’m surprised you recognised her.” Lena won’t look at her.

It slips out before she can stop herself, before she thinks. There’s never been any logic with Lena. Not for Kara. “It’s only been two months for me.”

Lena’s head whips around, her hair flicking around her face and eyes so green Kara feels pinned in place by such a surreal colour. Her gaze is burning, eyebrows furrowed and she stares at Kara like she’s the only thing Lena can’t figure out. Questions Kara has no right to ask that were burning on her tongue fizzle out. There are three years in Lena’s eyes Kara has missed. Three years of some plan or plot, three years in which she went from a mere researcher in her family’s company to CEO. Three years in which apparently Lena learned about alien life on Earth. Three years in which she’s been working with Sam—more years than that, working with Sam—three years to move on from the woman she dated for a few months who betrayed her in the worst way possible.

Three years, and still there’s something in Lena’s eyes, something bright and yearning and _young_ , that pulls Kara in.

Then Lena is in her space, in all the air around her. That hand catching that glass is pressed sharp into Kara’s chest, right in the centre between her breasts and Lena’s other hand is slipping around her neck. It’s unexpected, it shouldn’t be happening—Lena is so, _so_ angry, so changed—so much has happened, for her.

But it’s been two months of guilt and missing her, for Kara, and she doesn’t have the sense to step away. Not when Lena’s lips are pressing to hers, her fingers pulling her closer. Her lips are soft, surprising so considering how tightly wound Lena is—she’s basically thrumming with it.

But her kiss is gentle. It’s soft.

It’s so fleeting, it almost never was.

She’s pulling back and it could be said she pulls back because she hears her door opening, but she was pulling back just before that. Her eyes are bright, and Kara just wants to pull her back in.

Her face shutters, like it did two months ago.

She walks back into her office and Kara runs her tongue over her bottom lip as if she can keep the taste of Lena with her. She follows Lena in and a woman stands in the middle of the room, tablet in hand and lab coat almost too big. She blinks at them with wide brown eyes, cheeks a little pink.

“Sorry for the uh, interruption, Lena. I thought I was late for the meeting.”

Lena leans her hip against the desk and Kara hovers, not sure what she’s meant to do. A lifetime of training, and as usual, Lena has completely thrown her off.

This is her Lena, but it’s also another Lena.

A Lena three years changed who glares at her with a thrumming anger but kisses her like she may shatter at the touch.

The woman looks from Kara to Lena, eyebrows raised.

Kara feels judged and can’t say why.

“Don’t worry Alex, Sam messaged a while ago to say she’ll be a little late anyway.”

The woman, Alex, gives a nod, her gaze sliding back over to Kara.

Lena crosses her arms. “Alex Danvers, this is Kara. She was just leaving.”

And Lena looks at her, eyebrows raised, and for the second time in twenty four hours, Kara leaves her office having achieved absolutely nothing.

Not absolutely nothing.

Cadmus. A plan. Lena’s place in it all.

A kiss that still whispers on her lips.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so so so much for commenting. I know all fic writers say it, but that's because it's true--it's motivation in each one :D

The office door snicks closed as Kara leaves and Lena stays with her hip against the desk, arms crossed, keeping her eyes from following Kara out, from staring at the door. None of this is going how it should.

Alex shrugs at her, lab coat shifting.

“So…” she purses her lips and Lena already knows what’s coming. “You two were cosy.”

Lena raises her eyebrows. Cocks her head. Takes Alex in. “I’m still your boss, Alex.”

Alex snorts, hands folded in front of her, tablet tucked in. “Right, yes. Sorry, Miss CEO.”

Lena pushes away from the desk and sits down in her chair. She almost, almost sulks. “You could at least pretend to take me seriously.”

They’re so careful here, of what they can say. To seem real, but not too real. To appear committed without it seeming false. If they were ever caught outside of work, they needed to make sure an alibi of being friends would be believed, if her office is bugged, like they all know it has to be.

Alex sits down a little more elegantly than Lena managed, the complete opposite of how they both normally function. “Yes, well, when I’ve seen you fall asleep face first in research papers it takes away a little of your authority.”

Lena just sighs.

“There was drool.”

“Yes, _okay_. I fell asleep when we were working late. Once.”

Alex smiles with a little wince like she doesn’t want to _have_ to point this out even as the grin grows even more, and holds up two fingers. “Twice.”

Lena holds her hand out. “Do you at least have the new reports?”

Alex bites down a smirk and passes the tablet over. “All done.”

Scrolling down the screen, Lena takes in the numbers. “Still failing on test runs?”

Alex pushes an escaped tendril of her long hair back. That doesn’t seem to work, so she tugs her hair out of its ponytail and starts to pile it on top of her head. “Some mild improvements after we tweaked the isotope like you suggested, but yes, still failing.”

Lena leans back in her chair and crosses her legs. She frowns at the numbers. “Mother will not be pleased.”

When she looks up Alex is grinning. But she says, with all sincerity in her voice that no bug would think she was looking just the opposite no matter how high tech. “I know. It’s a problem.”

Lena almost chokes on her laugh. “We need progress.” She drops the tablet on the desk. “And soon. I won’t have this delayed any longer. We may be friends, Danvers, but you and Arias were chosen specifically because we thought we would see results.”

Alex juts her chin. “And you will. There’s no one else who can get this done.”

A game they play, for the courtesy of anyone listening. Suiting their purpose so that what they do when they _aren’t_ seemingly following her mother’s orders remains unseen.

An exhausting one. Moves and countermoves. It’s boring, repetitive.

But a means to an ends.

Like the kiss she gave Kara.

Lena can still taste her. Like she left herself behind on Lena’s bottom lip. There to take over, to remind her. It was supposed to make her feel better. A grasp at control after so long without. Two months for Kara made Lena finally feel like she was a step ahead, had something she didn’t. Because that soft girl from three years ago who smiled like Lena was something, who cradled her cheeks and ran her hand through her hair like Lena was _hers_ , is someone Lena struggles so much to reconcile with the girl that stole Lena’s pass, who brought food to the lab to make a plan, who kissed her so gently yet broke her heart with such rough force.

She thought, for a second, that Lena would be able to feel the difference, now. Would be able to get it, with three years ahead and a mostly mended heart.

She wasn’t able to. She didn’t get it.

Kara still tastes the same. Still kisses the same.

Her eyes softened, right after, just the same

That wasn’t how it was supposed to go.

It was supposed to be a power move, when really Lena sacrificed a piece she’d never meant to give up again.

She leans her elbows on the desk, refuses to fall anymore into that. “That’s good to hear. Because I have some ideas.”

And just then Sam walks in, door flying open and then closing more quietly as Sam winces. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I—”

“ _I had a thing,”_ Both Alex and Lena say at once.

Sam pauses, a smile playing on her lips, slightly flustered in her coat. “Very funny.”

Alex, eyes dipping down to her lap, shrugs and Lena watches pink spreading just up her neck. She manages an amused smile, the flush out of place. “Well, we’re pretty well rehearsed by now.”

“I know, I know.” Sam flops into the other chair opposite Lena’s desk and shrugs out of her coat, letting it fall against the back of her seat behind her. “So.” And she grimaces. “You saw the numbers?”

Lena grins at her, “Yes. They’re awful.”

Sam grins back, and Alex is smirking and when Sam speaks, her voice is utterly serious. “Well, we need to get to work improving these.”

“I’ll accept nothing less,” Lena says.

 

* * *

 

Lena's constant dismissal is like a punch, one that lands like it would on Krypton. When training didn't come with super powers and they were forced to go harder, tougher--when Sa'am's fist would hit her and she'd fly backwards. And for a second, just a short one, when her back hit the cement and her head would crack backwards, Kara would want to lie there and just...give in.

That's what it feels like every time Lena tells her to leave. Looks at her like she's broken something irreparable.

That kiss though? That felt like a the moment Kara was able to push herself back up. To press her knuckles into the hard floor and stand. To fight again.

Though she's fairly certain it meant nothing of the sort to Lena.

There’s so much to sort through, ideas and plans and the conversation she overheard between Lena and her mother.

The kiss.

The kiss shouldn’t be at the forefront of her mind. It shouldn’t be anything—it barely was. A simple touch of lips, something shared between the warmth of their mouths and the short second Kara felt Lena’s fingers, light as anything, brush over her stomach.

Kara flies up. She goes somewhere discreet where no one can see and pushes off the ground as fast as she can, the hair whipping her hair around as she leaves a back alley behind. In a split second she’s in the clouds, then above them, hazy blue overhead and bright, fluffy white below her. She lies on her back as if she’s floating on water—one of the many exercises she was put through to prepare her for Earth—and stares above. Nothing is here, and everything is here. Atoms and molecules and pieces and parts. Bits of everything. Things she understands and knows, things she’s studied. Concepts and trials and theories and beliefs.

All tangled in the blue sky of this planet that shouldn’t feel like home, but does.

The feels like somewhere she wants to say, and only has six days left on. Commands demand her return and that comment sits in her head, needles at her, a ticking clock reminding her she has places to go. To be.

Expectations.

Orders.

And that’s what Kara does, follow and obey.

With a twist in her chest, she misses her aunt.

With a harder twist, she wants to go back to Lena. Even if she just wants something from Kara that is far less than she wants to give. Even if she wants revenge, control, wants nothing more—Kara will take it, at this point. Because all she can see in front of her is a long plodding road of her planet that leaves the taste of mistrust on her tongue.

Her future, and that’s it.

A planet that said Earth has no knowledge of alien life. Though that doesn’t seem to be true—there may not be common knowledge. But there is an underground. That bar can’t be the only one. There is safety, on this planet—except from Lillian Luthor, who knows of alien life on Earth and wishes to end it.

If that conversation is anything to go by.

Kara’s thoughts twist and turn with all of this, too much, too little, the flash of scorn in Sa’am’s eye. _Sam’s_ eye. No more Sa’am. The look in Lena’s before she kissed her. The look when Kara walked into her office yesterday. The understanding that Kara’s planet wasn’t everything she thought it was, the understanding that Kara doesn’t know where she belongs anymore, to whom she belongs, how she belongs.

Kara doesn’t really know _who_ she is anymore.

A mission she trained for forever over. A mission she invented just to leave.

And all of those thoughts clash and clatter and she twists her hand in her shirt and stares sightlessly upwards, towards Krypton for all she knows, and wants to hit pause.

She stays there until night takes over the sky, darkness creeping in from the edges, light fading on one side until its gone completely. And it’s then that she lets herself start to drop back down, bit by bit.

It’s then that she focuses on the city below her, sound crashing in like a drum. She rolls it around, tunes in and out until one solid sound hits hard.

_“Help.”_

She drops like a stone then and follows that sound she’s latched onto, that racing heartbeat, that crying out, until she’s over an alley, high, above the buildings but her sight letting her see down—it’s always an alley, on this planet, why?—a woman stands with her back pressed to brick and Kara can _hear_ panic in every breath she draws, in the pulse at her throat, in her wrists. Three men surround her, there’s the glint of a knife—Kara’s own heart thumps at the sight of it and she tugs her hood over her head and is about to drop in, to decimate these men who think they can terrify this woman and do what they want, but then Kara’s beaten to it.

A figure, all in back, drops from the roof and Kara stays just a few feet above it, no idea how she missed their arrival.

The person, all in black, a light outfit, armoured in some places, lands behind the men and Kara can hear the “Oh thank God” from the woman.

It happens quickly.

Two heads are slammed together, they fall like bricks. And before the one with the knife can spin, another figure sappears from over the wall the woman’s back is still pressed against, a helmet on, streamlined and a light glinting from within. The figure spins, kicks the guy, twists his hand back, the knife clattering to the ground and pulls him close with a yank to head butt him.

It all takes about ten seconds.

“Let us get you home.”

And it seems that this city has a vigilante or two.

Kara leaves them to it, because there’s an idea about it itching at the back of her mind.

Kara goes to where she knew before, hoping it hasn’t changed. There’s the balcony, the expensive apartment complex.

On that balcony, she lands next to Lena

Who only blinks and bites her lip. Eyebrows raised a little, Lena appraises her and Kara stands, hood still on until she pushes it back, her hair a mess from flying.

“You kissed me,” Kara says.

Her excuse to break the rule on pushing Lena, on invading her space. Her excuse for showing up. Her excuse, in general.

Lena puts her glass down on the small table, but keeps her fingers on it, like she needs something to anchor her.

“I did.”

Kara feels out of breath, like she’s been running—something impossible on this planet, exercise does nothing to her. “You’re not surprised I just flew onto your balcony.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re mother knows about aliens.”

Lena cocks her head. “So you did hear something today.”

“I did.”

“Then yes, she does. As do I, clearly.”

“Your city has vigilantes.”

Lena chuckles. “The entire population knows about them.”

“But I think _you_ know more about them.”

“How long are you here for?”

Kara swallows. “Less than a week.”

Lena doesn’t even react but to pause, to watch her. “ _Why_ are you here, Kara?”

“You kissed me.”

“No, why are you here. On Earth?”

She should say it. This is the moment. She has those orders that are clattering in her head, seeping into her. She has orders and a mission and only six more days. Five, really, with the stars stretched out over head, washed out by the glow of city lights. She should tell Lena the importance of those blueprints, locked away and probably forgotten. The way the planet is going, hurtling towards something so unstoppable, something so destructive. Convince her, get her to use Luthor Corp and her intelligence and make sure a world that is half convinced is truly convinced, then go back to Krypton. Go _home_. That is why she is here. It’s why she’s on this planet.

Instead, she steps in Lena’s space, a mirror of Lena hours ago on a different balcony.

It’s all wrong. Or maybe it’s right. Lena _knows_ this time. There are no lies bubbling between them, not exactly. There’s no secret mission in which Kara is using Lena towards an end and hating herself every step.

It should be better, though.

Instead, it feels something like falling apart, rather than coming back together. She threads her fingers in Lena’s hair and kisses her, and all her pieces shatter on the ground. Lena’s hand wraps around the back of her neck, pulls her in tighter. She gasps into Kara’s mouth, lips parting and warm tongue on her own and it’s familiar and aching and _everything_ Kara’s missed, but all those parts of her scatter.

Lena’s hands are pushing at her coat and both their fingers are plucking at buttons, tugging shirts out from where they’re tucked into waistbands. They’re stumbling through to Lena’s room and there are nails down Kara’s back and hips rolling against her own. Lena’s mouth never leaves hers but her hand is desperate between Kara’s legs and all of it, every second, is like something being pulled apart in separate ways and Kara knows this isn’t what she wants it to be.

That two months is different to three years. That leaving behind someone you broke all to follow orders and save a planet that probably didn’t deserve it is different to being left behind, betrayed and used.

That secrets sit on both their tongues and neither give words to any of them.

She knows all this.

But when she slips her hand between Lena’s legs, wet and warm and everything, when she matches the rhythm that Lena’s set and swallows her groans and Lena tugs at her hair, almost yanks it, she can’t seem to care that she knows all of this.

Because all she really knows, right then, is she missed Lena, and this is something.

Even if it’s nothing to Lena.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HiiiiiI! Sorry this is quite a while after the others. I'm away. But the comments that kept coming made me want to update, so thank you for that! You're all amazing. Keep 'em coming ;)

Kara doesn’t sleep.

Lena does. She falls asleep some time after two. Not cuddling, but skin brushing skin—an ankle over a calf, a palm pressed to the bed next to a hip, warmth radiating between their overheated bodies, and the cool night air brushing over the sweat on their skin.

Lace curtains billow in the breeze coming through the floor to ceiling windows and the room is washed in silver light. Lena always slept with a window open, with barely anything to separate herself from the outside. No heavy light blocking curtains.

Like she was claustrophobic, even in sleep.

Kara never minded, back then. It meant she got to wake up with the sun on her skin, bathing her in warmth of something energising that didn’t exist for her on Krypton.

Not just for the powers she got here, but because this planet wasn’t at the precipice of extinction.

It’s around five, a glow just starting outside, when Lena rolls over and wraps herself along Kara’s side.

And that, there—that sliding together of all their little pieces that were pulled apart last night—is why she stayed awake. Waiting. Hoping.

Lena’s lips are brushing her neck, breath puffing over it, slow and steady. A hand snakes over her belly, a leg eventually curling up over her hips.

And for reasons she can’t even name, a lump is in Kara’s throat, growing and growing until it’s pressing at all her insides, tears pooling in her eyes. She squeezes them shut, presses a hand to her mouth and swallows the sob bursting in her chest.

Because she could have had this—this all could have been hers.

Not for the smallest of moments, not lost to two months or three years. Not broken yet still climbing into her ship and fleeing this planet.

But whole and real.

Not whatever fleeting thing it was last night, ebbing with something rougher and punishing even at the glimpses of a soft look in an eye or the brushing of a kiss to sensitive places.

She could have had this. She could have had _something_. Something that was hers. Her and Lena’s and theirs together.

Solid and true and built from a foundation not rotting with her own spun lies.

Tears are seeping into the hair at her temples, and she lies on her back with the ghost of what could have been wrapped around her and presses this sob inside even further so she doesn’t wake that ghost who will take away even the teasing of could have been and leave her with nothing but cold air and a dismissive look that Kara deserves.

 

* * *

 

It goes just like Kara expects. Or maybe a little better.

Before Lena is truly awake, she’s pressing closer, leg sliding further over Kara’s hips, mouth pressing to the pulse in her neck. Not a kiss, she’s not awake enough for that.

Then she’s pulling away, and Kara squeezes her eyes shut more and sucks in a shuddering breath and resists every urge to pull her back, tug her closer—to run her fingers through sex-and-sleep tousled hair and kiss her neck, her cheeks, her lips, until there’s a smile and sleepy eyes open to look at her in the warm glow from the windows.

But instead, she lets Lena go.

And Lena slides away, then pushes up and is sitting on the edge of the bed. There’s a moment, like something is going to happen, one of them is going to say something. Probably Lena at this point, who may not realise it, but Kara is following her rules, her steps. She gets to decide how this goes, whether she knows that or not, because it’s Kara who so badly fucked this up. Her back has red lines down it, a dangerous game Lena encouraged in the heat of it all last night, Kara’s control teetering along with her orgasm.

Her head turns just slightly, hair a mess down her back, and she glances at Kara over her shoulder, the look impossible to read, eyes so green Kara could just sink into them. And then she’s standing and heading to her bathroom.

Kara is waiting to be told to go. To stay. That it was a mistake.

She’s waiting for something, but all she gets is that impossible look, a last glimpse of Lena disappearing into the bathroom, and the sound of the door closing.

So she doesn’t go.

The same as the balcony where Lena kissed her yesterday—she will just keep following, keep staying, keep trying, until Lena tells her to go away. Then she will.

And she’ll try again the next day.

Because Lena’s yet to tell her not to come back.

That lump isn’t entirely gone, her cheeks dry with the tears she couldn’t smother. That ache is in her chest, that knowledge that whatever this is, whatever is happening, can never be what it could have been, what they had, what she wanted them to have.

But it’s not nothing, either.

 

* * *

 

Eggs. And bacon. Frying butter. Coffee.

The last, Lena’s used to smelling in her apartment.

The rest is new. She’s not big on cooking. Sam would cook, sometimes. Usually though, Sam couldn’t stay. Or they’d grab something on the way to work, or Lena had something delivered. She loved food. She just didn’t love making it. She was too busy, too many things ahead, too much else on her mind.

She thought Kara would be gone. Would slip out. And she hadn’t known if that thought made her relieved or disappointed. She didn’t know what she wanted. This was all supposed to be some game, some kind of power move, some semblance of gaining back her control. Lena knew herself well enough to get that. She had insight. She knew what that kiss on the balcony was, what last night was supposed to be, despite the wisp of longing in the back of her mind she smothered.

But Kara was still here, and the shock of it, the sounds of her moving around in the kitchen, has Lena pausing.

She gets dressed, blowdries her hair. Takes her time.

Kara is still there.

For five more days, anyway.

She doesn’t bother with her lipstick, with breakfast ahead.

She walks into the kitchen, unprepared, uncertain. Two things she does not like being, nor does she do them well.

Kara is in her clothes from last night, hair loose around her shoulders, tumbling soft curls she’s clearly tried to tame from what Lena did to it in bed. An urge crawls up Lena’s fingers, up her nerves, to step forward and press herself into the toned planes of Kara’s back, into the softness of her hoody. Breathe in the smell of her skin, the sweat and sex and shampoo. Wrap her arms around her waist.

She slides into a stool at the kitchen island instead and rests her elbows on top of the counter, watching her.

Kara glances over her shoulder, gives her a hesitant, soft smile, and when Lena doesn’t say anything, goes back to the stove, pushing the eggs around, the bacon. Silently, she turns and slides a coffee to Lena, their fingers brushing when Lena takes it.

“Thank you.”

Kara just gives that same, strange smile, and goes back to the stove.

Lena could cry, without any reason, at this counter with this steaming hot coffee that’s burning the hand wrapped around the mug with the woman she spent three years trying to forget making her breakfast.

Instead, she takes a scalding sip.

“Why are you here, Kara?” she asks, the same question from last night that Kara never really answered. “On Earth.”

Kara sucks in a breath, and picks up one of the plates she has ready, plating the food and putting it in front of Lena with a thoughtful look on her face. She gets her own plate and doesn’t sit, but rather stands opposite her, fork in hand.

“What do you know about where I’m from?” She stabs at some eggs and lifts it to her mouth.

She eats like Sam. Like she’s always hungry. Like she wants three times what’s on her plate.

Her eyes never really leave Lena’s.

“More than you probably think,” Lena answers. “Not as much as I’d like.”

Kara swallows, considers her. Then seems to decide something. “Sam wouldn’t tell you much?”

Lena sucks in a sharp breath, at having it laid out like that. “How did you know I knew?”

“There was no other way you weren't shocked I fly. That I’m not from here. That I’m an alien. You’re incredibly smart—I know you suspected something when I left. I—” Kara’s voice breaks and Lena almost does too at the memory she’s about to evoke “I saw it on your face when I left.”

Lena picks up a piece of bacon, crispy and oily, and takes a bite, forgoing her fork. She doesn’t want to remember that day. Finally, she says, “I suspected. But I only found out about Sam two years ago. I’d known her since college and had no idea.”

“How did you find out?”

How indeed. Lena takes another bite, chewing slowly. “Someone tried to kill me. She stopped them in a way no human could. Bullets don’t bounce off human skin.”

The fork in Kara’s hand snaps, clean in two, and Lena starts slightly, staring at it, but Kara doesn’t even seem to notice, her eyes glued on Lena’s face. “Someone tried to kill you?”

“Get another fork, Kara.”

“Someone tried to kill you?”

There’s something hard in Kara’s voice. Something she’s never heard before. Something like steel. “Yes.” Lena stands up and gets another fork from the draw, sits back in seat and flicks it over the counter. Kara grabs it without looking away from her. “A stupid little man who thought eliminating me would solve his issues with the power Luthor Corp was gaining. He’s now in jail.” Lena takes a bite of eggs and smiles. Her mother would kill her for such a casual way of eating. “And his business is ruined.”

“Has anything like that happened since?”

Lena sighs. “Once. And don’t break another fork.”

Kara puts it down, her fingers biting into the granite counter top.

“Or my counter. It’s expensive.”

“Why are you so blasé about this?”

Lena clenches her jaw and looks Kara right in the eye. “Why do you care so much?”

They stare at each other, caught in the others question and Lena finally raises an eyebrow. “So that’s how I found out. Sam told me a little. She doesn’t talk much about Krypton. She said she left what was basically the CIA or FBI or something—”

“She defected.”

“She defected, then. And she’s been on Earth, alone, since she was a teenager. She can fly, she can move incredibly fast. She’s broken the sound barrier. She is, basically, indestructible. Her reflexes are off the charts. She—”

“You’ve studied her.”

“At her request.”

And to Lena's own joy.

“She’s one of the vigilantes?”

Lena hesitates, but there’s no reason to. Kara knows, anyway. It’s obvious. “Yes.”

“Lena—do you work with her?”

This Lena doesn’t want to answer. It’s probing too close to everything, one more question and they’re down a rabbit hole two years in the making. Two years of setting this up, of making sure it all works, of deception and playing her mothers game and spiralling too close to something she doesn’t want to be near. Two years after losing her brother. Two years of something that distracted her from what Kara did to her.

“Why are you on Earth, Kara?”

Kara looks like she’s going to push it, but instead she stabs at her food again. “What has Sam told you?”

“Nothing. She doesn’t know I knew you.”

“So you didn’t know for sure I was Kryptonian?”

“I knew you were an alien. It was an easy deduction. But only realised Kryptonian after Sam told me she was.”

“You do know you’re incredibly intelligent, don’t you?”

Lena blinks, hand on its way to her coffee. Something soft is in Kara’s eyes, she’s smiling at her. “Shut up,” she says, with a roll of her eyes. Her lips tug up and she smothers it in her cup, because she is _not_ flirting with Kara over breakfast after sex that could have been called angry sex three years in the making, and feeling like she half wants to throw this coffee at her, or kiss her, or kick her out. “So, why are you here?”

Kara sighs. “Two reasons.”

Lena just quirks an eyebrow at her. Kara takes a breath, and puts down her fork. “I’m here, because without what I took from you, my planet would be gone. It saved us. It was on the brink of environmental destruction.” Lena isn’t moving. “I was sent by my government to collect what we needed, and leave. I was to leave no trace. I was to give no indication that aliens existed to a world we thought was in the dark, and that showed no signs of being able to tolerate life outside of itself when it couldn’t even handle the differences in the life that already existed.” Kara’s fingers curl around the edge of the counter. “I was trained for this mission for years, since I was small, really. Maybe not this specific mission, but something like it. I had orders, Lena.”

And somehow, her question has opened up the floor for Kara to look at her like this: with wide opened eyes and sincerity tracing every feature. Lena can’t look away, even as it hurts.

“I had orders.” There’s a slight shake to her voice. “I didn’t—I never meant—”

Lena wants to tell her to stop. This isn’t what she asked. This isn’t what she wanted. She wanted an answer, to know what Kara was talking about with her mission the first day she walked into Lena's office. The glimmer of flirting, of ease, is so far gone it’s like it never was. Instead there is just Kara, looking at her hopelessly, and this weight in Lena’s chest, this ache, this hollow, yearning pain.

“I asked why you’re here, Kara.”

“And I’m telling,” she bites out. She takes a breath, and her cheeks are blotchy. “I’m here to warn your world that it’s spiralling towards the same extinction ours was. And maybe, down the road, it can save itself. But right now, if it acts _now_ , it can save so much more. Trees. Animals. _Real_ life.” Lena is hearing the words, she is. This doomsday message that feels surreal, even though it shouldn’t, since all they’ve been told for years is that their world is dying. She’s hearing it, but she can hear the rest of what is coming and she wants to stop it, because her anger at Kara is all that kept her going after and she doesn’t want that stripped away. “Officially, that is why I’m here.”

Lena’s lower lip almost quivers, and there are tears in Kara’s eyes that don’t belong there and everything just feels too heavy.

Lena doesn’t ask for the next, because suddenly, she just doesn’t want to know. She wants Kara to stop there. To stop. She knows where this is going. She can handle what's already been said, and five days, and then she’s gone, again. But this time, Lena will have called the shots. She slept with Kara last night know she was leaving again. Control was at her fingertips.

But not this.

“The second reason.” And Lena wants to stop her, but she’s frozen, stuck in this chair, watching this person who can crush buildings almost tremble in front of her after talking about orders like thats an excuse. “Is for you, Lena. Rao, I--I couldn't stop thinking about you.”

And that’s all it takes, for anger to spark in Lena’s chest. To lick up her throat and set fire to her mouth. “For me?”

Her voice doesn’t sound like the burning inside her. It sounds like ice and Kara just looks like she deserves it.

“You came back, for me?” Lena stands, the stool scraping back so loudly Kara winces. She puts her palms on the counter, and leans forward, eyes on Kara’s and mere feet between them. “You left me, Kara. You made me believe this was all something to you, and then you left me. You used me to save your planet and then you left. Nothing. You were gone.”

“I didn’t want to. I had orders.” There are tears on Kara’s cheeks and Lena wants to slap them away, to spit at her that she has no right to them, even as she wants to just fall into her and sob.

“You had orders to sleep with me? Not to just fuck me, but to invade my home, my life, my feelings? To _date_ me?”

“I loved you!” The words rip from Kara’s mouth like she knows she doesn’t deserve them. Like she knows she shouldn’t say them. Kara juts her chin, that blotchy red down her neck, now too. Her eyes shining and cheeks wet. “I love you.”

Lena reels back, away, takes a step like Kara hit her.

“Fuck you.”

She grits her jaw, turns, and leaves, slamming the door behind her.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Holllllyyyy crap those comments made my day. So much so, this happened faster than anticipated.

There are days Alex wonders how she used to get by with simple research. She loves the labs. The sounds of the centrifuge. Compiling data that links one step to the next to the next until the only logical conclusion is reached. She loves getting lost in it, coming to hours later realising that the entire world has been passing her by while she sat, entrenched in numbers and results and hypotheses.

But there was always an itch in the back of her mind. She got this job at Luthor Corp and her mom and dad were just, so proud. A relief on her mom’s face that Alex didn’t quite get but wondered if it had to do with a worry that Alex would lean towards something a little more dangerous, like her father. This job seemed catered to her, perfect. She worked her way up from lab assistant to running her own. She made products that made a difference. Her team was strong.

Until Lex noticed her, everything was simple. Even if there was a boredom there that she was failing to ignore.

“So, eleven tonight?”

Sam is sprawled across from her, stabbing her pasta salad in its plastic container on top of the steel bench. Everything she _shouldn’t_ be doing in a lab.

Alex would never tell her to stop.

She glared at one of the senior scientist for drinking a glass of water just yesterday until he backed slowly out of the room with it. Sam is all out _eating_ and all Alex can do is give her a reproachful look that Sam just grins at, wide and warm, and then stuffs in another mouthful.

“Will Lena be there?” Alex asks. She leans over the counter, lab coat sleeves pushed up, and slides a piece of paper under the container Sam’s eating from. As if that’ll help.

The look of thanks Sam gives at the futile gesture makes it worth it, and something hot runs up Alex’s spine.

She distracts herself from it by tugging at her ponytail, pulling it out and piling it high on her head in a sloppy bun that’ll stop tendrils getting in the way of her work. That Sam is currently distracting her from.

She has a to do list ten miles long. One that she’s wanting to get at.

Instead, she puts her elbows on the bench.

“She said she would be. Got to work on those numbers.” Sam winks.

That heat prickles up to Alex’s neck.

They talk more freely here. They don’t think it’s monitored like Lena’s office. Her mother has her claws in so deep in anything Lena does. The woman makes Alex want to take a swing.

Something she’s wanting to do now in general.

Lab work would never have been enough.

“Got to work on a few other things, too,” Alex says.

It comes out like it has a flirty edge to it and the heat creeps into her cheeks now, and Sam pauses, a slow grin stretching her cheeks.

“That a challenge, Danvers?”

Alex swallows. She has no idea what she’s doing. “Well, _someone_ was a little slow last night.”

Eyebrows shoot up. “It was a cloudy day.”

Alex snorts, and it shatters the energy between them, relief at that edging out the slight disappointment. “We both know that plays no role.”

“I was tired?”

“Lies.”

“Fine.” It comes out like a joking giving in, an acceptance of Alex’s argument in this weird teasing back and forth. But there’s something more serious on Sam’s face, a furrow between her brows.

“What is it?”

Sam cocks her head a little, looking at her, but says nothing.

“Sam? Is someone coming?” Alex looks behind her shoulder, but the lab is still empty, most others out for lunch. She can’t hear anyone out in the corridor—but Sam could.

“No. Just…” Sam swallows. “I’m worried about Lena.”

“Her mother do something?”

Seriously, Alex hates that woman.

“Nothing different to usual.” But Sam still looks concerned. “I don’t know.”

“Anything to do with Kara?”

Sam goes entirely too still, staring at her. Alex almost high fives herself. She knew it. Sam and Lena has been friends for years, now. There’s a closeness there that Alex, despite everything they’re all doing together, will never get close to. Not that she would want to—it’s for them, two women on the same level, who get each other. They go way back. But it does mean she’s often guessing at stuff Sam just gets about this weird plot they’re spiralling down, or about Lena’s decisions. “You met Kara?”

“They were on Lena’s balcony when I showed up yesterday. Lena was…” Lena looked like she’d been caught doing something. But how much did Alex say?

She knows Sam and Lena are close.

She saw them once, after one of their late night meetings. She walked into the kitchen and they weren’t doing anything, not really. But they’d all had scotch. Too much of it, considering they were supposed to be making serious plans. Alex’s shoulder was aching from the night before, and she’d been massaging it absentmindedly, mind on getting some water to swallow something to take the edge off the pain. She’d paused in the doorway, because the two of them had been next to the sink, in profile, hips leaning into the counter. They weren’t doing anything at all. But there was something in the way Lena had thrown her head back to laugh, something in the way her own fingers brushed her throat. Something in the way Sam watched her do it.

Something in both of their looks.

Alex knew they dated in college. But she’d thought, until then, that it was over.

There’s something between them. So what does Alex say?

“Alex?” Sam is looking at her, a small smile on her lips. “Lena was what?”

“They just…looked close.” Alex almost shifts, uncomfortable.

Sam laughs. “I knew it.” And Alex doesn’t really get why she looks so triumphant about knowing something about this Kara woman, who is so knew. “Oh, Alex.” And Sam’s laugh is almost sympathetic. “It’s okay. You look so worried.”

“I just thought…” Alex can’t even say it.

“There was. Something.” Sam is looking at her too intently, but Alex can’t look away. “Lena and I just, get each other. But it wasn’t serious. Or isn’t.”

“Oh.”

And that’s all she can say, while Sam doesn’t break eye contact, and she can’t explain the relief that’s grown from the seed from before and is blooming in her chest, pushing a smile on her lips that Sam returns.

“So?” Sam asks. “Eleven meeting? We could train before.”

Alex swallows. “Okay.”

And she’s still smiling, even with confusion trying to smother that relief.

It fails.

 

* * *

 

Kara gives Lena the day.

Which means she has absolutely nothing to do. At all.

Nothing.

She knows an entire…two people on this planet. Three, if you include that Alex Danvers who interrupted her and Lena on the balcony yesterday.

So Kara leaves the city, as discreetly as she can, and flies to the other side of the country. And the she just...walks. She walks around the city and she sits in a park. She buys ice cream, something Lena introduced her to when she was first on Earth and is just as good now as it was then.

She’s not good at free time. At doing things for herself, and herself alone. She wasn’t raised that way. Everything was regimented from before she could even remember. When she woke up, when she ate, who she spoke to, who she trained with. She did what she was told. Her free days were spent studying, or with her family--though the latter was rare, what with how busy her parents were. And she herself was.

Even now, that timeline is in her head, pressure in the back of her mind. She must go back in less than five days. Less even.

But less than five days is plenty to accomplish what she came to do. What Krypton thinks she came to do.

It’s done, really. Lena knows, and Lena will get this planet back on track. Will dig up the blueprints to a forgotten plan, will raise awareness, will get this planet moving in a direction that means it won’t be without the things that Kara was, growing up. Without the things the last several generations were without.

She closes her eyes. A breeze plays over her skin. Leaves rustle all around, overhead. She can hear animals moving in them, chattering, living, breathing. Insects scuttle within the ground, in earth not scorched to death. Earth that still supports life. Not just animal, but plant.

You can pick food off a tree and eat it, here. Just like that.

And no one around her realises how lucky they are to do so.

Seven billion species were lost on Krypton.

They will never be recovered.

Earth, hopefully, will never have to lose that many. Or anymore than it has, if it heeds Lena’s warning. Acts soon.

Which it will.

She could go now, really.

Kara opens here eyes, the light streaming through the tree overhead, and tilts her face into the sun. Looks up, at the sky, the clouds.

Mission accomplished.

She should go home.

To Krypton.

Report in.

But those four and a half days are hers, much like this time on this bench, with nothing to do, and she’s going to keep them.

Something she can tuck away and keep when she goes back. Much like the memory of Lena. The first time on Earth, when she was quieter. Alone. Sadder, really. But happy with Kara.

Much like the memory of last night, something selfish in Kara never wanting to forget the taste of Lena under her tongue, the tug of her hands in Kara’s hair. The memory of their skin pressed together, a fluttering heartbeat in a cage of ribs far too fragile for Kara’s liking.

Even the memory of the anger in her eye this morning when Kara said three words that tore something in Lena apart.

That’s hers.

It’s hers, and none of it, absolutely none, belongs to Krypton.

The sun sets in vibrant, shifting colours and Kara stays where she is. The park empties, parents tugging kids away, people walking in the cover of darkness with bumping shoulders, clasped hands.

That feeling is seeping into her skin again. The same one when Lena rolled over and pressed in close just over twelve hours ago.

The feeling of wanting something that isn’t hers to want, anymore.

She wants Lena. She wants Earth.

She can’t have either. Not for longer than four days.

 

* * *

 

Krypton is a bitter memory. One that sits in a small place inside herself Sam likes to forget.

She can’t escape it though. Everything she is is thanks to that planet. The planet that saved her.

That looked to destroy her, with excuses thick on its tongue and a vivid belief in everything it did. Like a fervour.

Dangerous.

Fantastic, if you were who it was saving.

Horrifying, if you were who they sought to destroy to do so.

Some days, she can forget it all.

Kara’s brought it all back with her. Dragged it though the atmosphere and is carrying it around in the slope of her shoulders, the glow in her skin, the way she holds her expressions back, keeps her self neutral rather than show what she’s thinking. The small markers of a Krytponian. The duck of her head. The way being human is practiced, something observed. Something taught, so she could pass on her mission here.

A mission that would not have happened without Sam. Advice on how to pass, information, vital to it all, that Sam fed them.

Something she regretted when she came back from the extended vacation she took to be far away from the Kryptonian they sent. Because Lena was distant. Quiet. She worked more than ever.

Sam wondered if she knew someone from the inside had sold company secrets, that Lena knew…something. But she found no evidence that anyone was even aware a copy of the blueprints were taken.

But still Lena was just…absent.

Dark rings around her eyes. She wouldn’t really talk to Sam. Lena was never an open type, nor a chatty one.

But she just…checked out.

Then, bit by bit, she came back.

She came back with a vengeance when she found out about Sam, something lighting on her face at the revelation, seemingly unconcerned with the attempt on her life, but so intrigued with what Sam had kept hidden for so long, unsure of what reactions would be but also just so desperate to forget.

Then when her mother’s plans became apparent, Lena Luthor, CEO, appeared.

She was still Lena.

Just…different.

Sam blames Krypton for all of it, which makes no sense at all.

Their meeting that night after Alex and Sam train goes as planned. Which means Sam, Alex, and Lena talk over what they need, work on everything Lillian expects them to, then they carry the bottle of scotch to the secret lab under Lena’s apartment building, hidden behind her storage space, that her mother has no idea exists.

Well, they hope she has no idea. They’re all absolutely screwed if she does.

Lena pours her glass with a heavy hand and sits down on one of the stools around the steel counter in the middle of the room. They’re supposed to be talking seriously, here, but Sam gets the feeling that’s not happening.

“So,” Lena kind of waves her hand around that’s holding the glass, takes a sip. “Planning.”

Alex presses her lips together and her gaze flicks to Sam, then away as those pursed lips almost turn into a smile.

“Right.” Sam slides into a stool opposite Lena and reaches for the bottle, pouring a glass. “Planning.”

Alex, already holding her full glass from before, presses her smile into the glass as she sips.

Lena just takes another sip.

No one speaks.

Alex snorts.

Sam chokes on her laugh.

Lena sighs. “Fine.” She tops her glass up. “Clearly I’m not in the frame of mind tonight.”

She drops her chin on her hand, propped up, and a rush of affection hits Sam, for this woman who’s always been there for her. Whose response to Sam being an alien wasn’t horror or shock or disgust, but acceptance. Interest, of course. She’s Lena Luthor. But she didn’t change one iota in how she interacted with Sam.

This woman, who’s been a friend, a lover—who’s been comfort and home and everything Sam didn’t think she’d ever have.

Who, since Kara showed up, hasn’t been herself.

It’s not the turning down of Sam’s advance the other night that has her thinking this. That has always come and gone, depending on how both of them are.

It’s this distance in her eye.

It’s the heavy pour.

It’s the needing Sam to get her into bed the other night.

It's the clenched jaw tonight.

Something is up with Lena Luthor.

“What’s up, boss?”

Lena huffs and takes another sip. Doesn't take the bait at being called something she hates. Alex is standing next to Sam, hips digging into the counter as she leans on it, and she’s close.

Closer than she needs to be.

Closer than she usually stands.

Something twists in Sam’s stomach—something she never lets herself feel around Alex, or shouldn’t let herself feel. She’s straight. An employee.

But, mostly, the straight thing.

Never mind the training hours before. The way Alex zeroed in on her, eyes intent and jabs relentless.

Alex wavers a little closer, and Sam can almost feel the heat off of her.

Lena straightens. “Nothing. I just—it’s all getting closer.”

“You’re nervous?” Alex asks. Her finger is running over the rim of her glass.

They’re all nervous.

“No. Well, yes.” Lena ponders the bottom of her drink. “Yes, that’s it.”

It’s not it. She’s lying. She won’t look at them. There’s a clench to her jaw. Has been all day.

She’s angry.

“Why don’t we work on those suits?” Lena puts her glass down. “I have something fun for you to try, Alex.”

She won’t look at them, and this all started with Kara’s arrival.

Sam’s an idiot. She’d assumed Kara was just here for this mysterious mission Kara hoitily made a point of Sam not having information access to. But Lena’s been strange since Kara arrived. Sam had been too distracted with her shock at seeing her.

Too wrapped up in her own Krypton angst.

But Lena has been a mess since then. Distracted. Angry. Distant. That very faint bruise at Lena’s neckline, almost covered.

Almost.

Kara had been so interested in why Sam was working with her.

What the fuck had Kara done to Lena?

Alex made a joke, and Lena laughed, the sound hollow and her smile not quite reaching her eyes.

Sam needed to find Kara Zor-El. And soon.

 

* * *

 

Anger is one thing Lena is not good at hiding. She doesn’t storm around, or rant. But it sits in her skin, fuses with it even, gets a glint in her eye, in her voice.

She knows this, and tries to tamp it down, but isn’t very good at doing so.

After twenty four hours, she finally thinks she could be ready to see Kara. That fury has calmed to a simmer rather than a boil in her blood and she doesn’t feel like slamming her hand down on her desk _as_ hard when she remembers the words “I love you”.

But then, sitting at her desk an nine am after the most unproductive meeting the night before, Lena wants to message Kara to get a conversation over so Kara can just _go away_ since that’s what she’s going to do since _duty_ and _orders_ are just so important to her and she _has_ to go back in three days, but then Lena realises she has no way of contacting Kara and _all_ their contact since she arrived has been on Kara’s terms and that fury rises up again and Lena actually does slam her hand down on her desk, teeth gritted.

She goes on with her day; her receptionist mostly avoids her, not that Lena can blame her. Sam comes in, takes one look at Lena and just backs out. Alex appears, shoves some papers at her and only raises an eyebrow at the look Lena is _trying_ to tamp down and stands there until Lena reads them and signs them. Alex takes them back from her and tells her to leave early, if she can.

Lena can’t, because she’s _behind_ because she’s been so distracted by Kara.

Around one, someone knocks on her door while her receptionist is at lunch and Lena just calls come in and so Kara does just walk in, soft in a pair of denim jeans and a white button up and her hair loose. The door shuts gently behind her and Lena straightens in her chair, legs crossed and just, _glowers_ at her.

Kara has the decency to duck her head.

She walks forward and pauses in front of her desk. Two red spots are high on her cheeks.

And Kara can’t look up and meet her eye. She looks…Kara looks small. She looks small and defeated there.

“I wanted to give you some space, yesterday.”

And with those words, all the anger just…fades.

It’s not gone. It’s there, somewhere. But Lena is just, tired. And Kara is here, she’s here and she goes in three days and has been gone for three years, but two months to her, and betrayed Lena in a way she didn’t think she could ever be betrayed, but looking at her now, remembering that raw, stripped bare voice when she said _I love you_ , Lena just feels tired.

She stands up and walks around her desk, steps right up to Kara, who turns to her like she doesn’t know if Lena is about to tell her to leave. Her eyes come up, blue, crystal clear, shining, and Lena’s hands cup her cheeks.

Because Kara is here, and she came across the universe to get back to her and she leaves in three days and she holds some part of Lena. For three years that part’s been gone and it’s back here now and it should feel wrong after being gone so long, but really, it’s just all clicking back in to place.

She presses her forehead to Kara’s and Kara draws in the most painful, shuddering breath, and Lena steps right into her, still cupping her cheeks, their fronts flush together. It’s not close enough. It’s not, but Kara’s breath is shaky over her lips and her cheeks are wet and Lena’s thumbs are brushing over them, so gently. And finally, like she realises she has permission, Kara’s arms come up, hands on her waist, fingertips digging in. Lena opens her eyes. Kara’s so close, her own eyes open and shimmering and still, pressed this close, she’s not close enough.

“I’m still so angry with you,” Lena says.

And Kara nods, because she knows. She expects nothing less.

Lena loops her arms around Kara’s neck, pulls her in. She tilts her head and Kara presses forward, urgent, like she feels the same need as Lena. Like she needs to be closer, like there are billions of lightyears and galaxies and an entire universe separating them, tugging them in opposite directions with their needs and demands and wants when all the two of them can do is clutch at each other.

The kiss is like coming home and Lena almost sobs into it. Kara pushes her back until Lena against the desk and there’s something solid to take their need. Lena sits and pulls her in, wraps her legs around her and Kara’s hand is in her hair, fingertips of the other running over her cheeks, her jaw, her neck, like she’s trying to commit her to memory.

And who knows, maybe she is.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy. Those comments my dudes. I just love them all. Every single one. Thank you.
> 
> Listing to: What Will Become of Us, by Passenger.

 

Kara, while Lena sits the desk. Kissing her like it was the last, like they were coming home, like the stars would go out, like she was breathing for the first time—all the cliches all at once, overwhelming and gasping and tasting of hot tears; salt, a slight bitterness that could only be aching. The graze of her lips over Lena’s neck, down her throat. And suddenly, Lena wants to be anywhere but here. Where her mother has ears and this moment won’t be theirs, so she’s pulling back and Kara looks so fragile, like she might fall apart right there.

Like she thinks Lena didn’t mean any of it.

So Lena kisses her again, tugs her in, puts it all in that kiss and when she pulls away this time, Kara’s eyes are a little glazed.

Lena asks for the afternoon, to organise some time, and for Kara to come back in a few hours. She still looks like maybe Lena didn’t mean it.

Lena looks her in the eye. “Promise you’ll be back? Four hours?” She says it to reassure Kara.

But she says it for herself, too.

Kara nods, relief in the gesture, and backs out of the room, and Lena sits at her desk with shaky legs.

Everything feels like it’s shifted, tilted.

The universe has moved, but it hasn’t pulled Lena with it.

 

* * *

 

A few hours.

Kara, after everything, just has a few hours and then she’ll have something. And, suddenly, those three hours are opening up ahead of her like they’re endless, a void to fill or it’ll swallow her hole.

She wants these three days and somehow, Lena wants them too and Kara can still feel her, like she's back in the office and getting to touch her when she thought she wouldn't again.

The elevator doors open and she pauses, not sure she wants to enter when she sees who it is, their hand in their suit pockets and looking far too at home, head cocked and long hair drifting over their shoulders.

“Kara.” And Sam smiles, but her eyes are cold. Krypton cold. Calculating, training-kicking-in cold. “You’re a hard one to track down.”

Kara has no choice, she has to step on.

She walks in with her shoulders straight and chin up. If this is how Sam wants to play it, after calling her Krypton’s pet days ago, Kara can embody that, no problem. They stand side by side and somehow, no one else gets on during the long journey down.

“Did you miss me, Sam?” Kara asks. She won’t look at her. She’ll stare straight ahead and meet this nonchalance with her own.

“Something like that. I wanted to…have a discussion yesterday.”

“I was out of town.”

“Well,” and Sam turns to her and Kara has to turn too, then, and meet her eye. Sam smiles. “That explains that, then.”

The doors open and Kara steps off and Sam shadows her. There are too many humans around. Kara can’t even try dash away before Sam, use a head start.

So she resigns herself to being shadowed.

Kara leads her out to the same alley as Sam once led her and turns, crossing her arms and meeting Sam’s eye.

Sam doesn’t waste any time.

“What are you doing with Lena?”

That’s not what she expected. Not at all. Kara almost stops breathing for a second, before she just narrows her eyes. “And what business is that of yours, defector?”

She goes harsher than she means to and just _knows_ that this tells Sam there is something there to know. Sam doesn’t even flinch at the insult.

“It’s definitely my business, pet.”

This term does get under her skin. It has since Sam first used it. The connotation that she belongs to a planet she has a growing repulsion for. A desire to leave behind.

Absolutely no desire to go back to.

Something of it must be on her face—Kara is cracking. This shell she’s incased herself in, that’s been bred into her, trained into her, is falling apart after just days her second time on this planet, and she can’t scramble fast enough to pull it back onto herself. She doesn’t want to be here doing whatever this is with Sam. She doesn’t want to be going back to Krypton.

She wants to be with Lena.

That’s all she wants, really.

Then Sam steps right in and Kara’s arms drop, already preparing to fight, muscle memory kicking in. But Sam just wraps a hand around Kara’s bicep and it takes everything in her not to tug it away.

“Come with me.”

And they shoot up, too fast to be followed by anyone's eyes, and Sam lets her go once they’re above the clouds and she flies only for a few minutes, Kara resined to follow, before she’s dropping down.

Kara lands next to her, blinking in the sun, the red sand stretching around her.

It’s like Krypton.

And Sam must think the same. “I thought you might feel more comfortable here.”

Kara gives a mirthless huff of laughter. “Because you think it’s my home?”

And Sam turns her gaze on her. “Isn’t it?”

And Kara opens her mouth, but says nothing. Because she can’t say yes. She just can’t, the word isn’t there at all. The “no” that’s pushing into her mouth feels traitorous—because how can she say that? Who is she, after her life, if not a daughter of Krypton?

And something shifts in Sam’s expression, except Kara doesn’t know what it is that shifts.

“What are you doing with Lena?”

“None of your business.”

Like Sam has some ownership of her?

“Like I said, Kara, it is. I brought you here. It was me that fed information to Krypton and me that meant they sent _you_. If you’re here to get under her skin, to get more information from her, hell, to gain her trust and then take her? Or betray her? That’s on _me_.”

And Kara gets it now. “You love her.”

Sam juts her chin. “Of course I do. She’s my best friend. And I can’t have you fucking with her because of something I did out of a debt I felt I owed to people I don’t even care about.”

“Too late.”

The words are out bitterly, and Kara wishes she could pull them back in.

“What?” Sam is watching her, and Kara feels like she’s being interrogated, like she’s back in that class they had to experience torture to learn to overcome it.

“It’s too late,” Kara hisses. “I already fucked up, Sam. I fucked up last time, and this is me scrambling to make it up. But you don’t get to know. I’m not telling you Lena’s secrets, because she clearly hasn’t told you. You don’t get to do this.”

And Sam is watching her, too intently. Her eyes widen, just so. “ _You’re_ in love with her.”

And Kara swallows. It must be all over her face, she feels painted with it.

Sam is still staring at her. “I wasn’t trying to get this—I thought you were sent back to get close to her, or hurt her, or use her—or…”

Kara is breathing too hard. She presses her lips together and shakes her head. “No. I’m here for something else. Officially. But really I…I came for her.”

Sam hasn’t broken her gaze. “You two—when you first came?”

Kara finally nods.

“And then you got what you needed and left.”

Kara nods.

The fist hits her square in the jaw and Kara flies backwards, lands in the sand and keeps going, sending sand flying and leaving behind a comet tail. Then Sam is over her, straddling her, Kara’s shirt clasped in her hand and fist pulled back and Kara kicks up, sending her backwards, and reversing their position.

Sam was always better.

It takes no time at all for Sam to hit her again, Kara on her back and Sam over her once more.

“Krypton is clearly in your blood, Kara Zor-El. You come here and break people and take what you want?”

Sam’s eyes are furious and Kara lets herself fall back in the sand and Sam straightens, stands over her, the sun glinting behind her head.

“I never wanted to hurt her.” Kara sighs, wipes at her mouth where she knows there’s blood. “But this isn’t just about her, is it Sa’am?”

“Don’t call me that.”

“You hit me for hurting Lena? Or because I’m representing something you defected from? What? Am I the embodiment of your failure?”

And Sam laughs. It’s a bark, more than anything. No mirth. “My greatest success was getting away from there.”

Kara pushes herself up and Sam lets her. “So you hit me just for being from Krypton?”

“No.” Sam steps back and Kara heaves herself up. “For being the embodiment of what that place stands for.”

And that cuts deep. Because Kara is. She is everything they trained her to be, no more, no less. She is years of training. She is Krypton's Daughter, the one that saved the planet from itself. The daughter who regrets it.

“What did Krypton do to you, Sam? You were of the House of The Protected. Then you were chosen to serve, to protect. We had a sacred right.”

And Sam scoffs, sand streaked on her cheek, and shakes her head. “You have no idea. You really were their perfect child. The perfect trainee. They should have called anyone _not_ of The House of The Protected,  _The Protected_. You thought Krypton ran so well.”

Thought. Exactly. Kara is seeing the cracks, in this corrupt planet that has torn itself apart and perhaps done things no one should to put itself back together.

But how did Sam know of this before? How does Sam seem to think that rotten edge goes right down to the centre?

“I thought you were looked after," Kara says.

“Why? Because children who lost their parents were given a house name? Were supposedly looked after by Krypton? Did it look charitable to you?”

It had. It _had_ looked that way.

“How does a child that is supposed to be protected get selected for the military from such a tender age, Kara?”

And Kara swallows. Can’t say anything.

“They knew of my origins, that’s how. They knew they could exploit it.”

“What origins?” Kara’s lips feel numb.

Sam hovers, as if on a precipice. A choice. Finally, “I was designed, by a cult." Her lip curls. "There was something dark in me that, when I was discovered and taken and the cult destroyed, scientists worked to repress. And managed to erase mostly. But it still lingered. I was faster. I was stronger. When tested and pushed, something came out in me they could use.”

The House of The Protected is not a shameful thing to be in on Krypton. It is special, it is powerful. They are children to be loved by society, to be looked after. To be taught and cherished. Not sold to the government to be used by the military program that all but raised Kara.

“What happened, Sam?”

Sam is appraising her. And Kara doesn’t even know if she wants to hear it. But she has to.

“When I was fifteen, when I, and you, were at the top. When I tested perfectly in everything, including loyalty, they pulled me into a room and ran pain tests. Your father was leading the tests.” Kara’s entire gut twists. “They wanted to find away to bring back what they had cured: to bring forth what the cult had called a World Killer. To weaponise me. To change me.”

Kara grits her jaw and makes herself meet Sam’s eye. Krypton is everything Kara suspected, and so much more.

“It went on a week and I begged them to stop.” Sam almost smiles. “Me, with all that training, begging. It wasn’t the pain.” She shakes her head. Twists her lips. “It was the moments it worked, and I lost myself and came to with blood on my hands, still in a lab and with no memory. It didn’t matter though. They wouldn’t stop.”

“How—” Kara’s voice breaks. “How did you get out?”

“Your aunt.” And Kara could cry. “She got me out and put me in a pod and told me never to come back.”

The desert is so still. There isn’t even a breeze to move the sand around their ankles, to lift their hair. Just the beating sun and the red, red sand and grooves past wind carved in sloping patterns. Just that, and Sam’s heart, harsh against her ribs, and the never wavering shock of her eyes, not leaving Kara’s face.

“Why wold you help them save themselves, then? Why give them info?”

“I owed them a debt. They _did_ save me, even if later they tried to reverse it. I owed that. I owed your aunt. I owed my fr—my peers. So they wouldn't be destroyed for their governments mistakes. And now it’s paid. And Krypton and I are done.” She cocks her head. “Or, I thought we were done." She was. "So, Kara Zor-El, Krypton’s Daughter and Saviour. Why are you here?”

And Kara doesn’t know what to do with this information. Her father, a man she thought was always busy trying to save their planet. Her aunt, who Kara waned to _be_ , her devotion to a planet she ultimately betrayed. Her government, torturing children.

Taking people’s freedom, with the excuse to save the majority.

“I’m here to save this planet.” Her mission leaks out of her. Treason, to share this with a defector. The small rebellion plants in her chest, settles there like it belongs. “And I’m here for Lena.”

And Sam blinks. “And to leave her.”

“I have three days.”

“Does she know that?”

“She does.”

And Sam nods. “Okay.”

“Okay.”

And Sam takes off and leaves her in the red, red sand the colour of her planet. This information plays over and over, until she presses it down. Compartmentalises it. It’s how they teach survival of torture. To put that pain in a box that is locked. Then below you. Then removed from you.

She can do that now.

Because Kara has three days with Lena, and she will not break that promise to be back.

But before she does that, she sits in the sand with a thump, and wonders about the girl, the baby Krypton was supposed to protect but instead dismantled so many times to make her fit what they needed.

 

* * *

 

Thereis a list. A list of things that Lena is supposed to be doing. It grows each day. Over three days, to be exact. Trickles down further and further until, in her mind, it’s something she holds in her hands and lets fall and the pages roll out the door.

Things become more urgent that if they’d been done on time, would have hardly been on her radar.

Work.

A looming shadow. Her mother. Hovering, always there.

Sam and Alex and all their plans.

The days pass in snapshots, and Lena files all of that list to the back of her mind, out of her sight, out of her thoughts.

For once, she lets herself be selfish.

Snapshots are fine with her. Those kinds of memories seem almost tangible when you’re left with them. Like Lena is about to be.

It’s all she’ll have. These snapshot moments that flash behind her eyes. She plays them in her mind the last night, while Kara sleeps, finally, dawn brushing the horizon in heavy, uneven strokes.

She wants them imbedded. Easy to remember, to draw up.

She spent three years making herself forget.

This time, she spends three hours making sure she won’t.

It starts with the desk, and a kiss that could break worlds, and Kara’s fingers on her, her hands clasping her as close as she can.

Then moves to the hours later, when Kara walks in like she thinks Lena has changed her mind. Instead, Lena grabs her hand and tugs her out, and Kara just follows.  
It’s a terrifying thought thinking someone will follow you anywhere.  
It’s a terrifying, horrifying thought to think they would, but with a time stamp, a clause in the depth of their emotions

The way Kara sits in the cab, her shoulder pressed to Lena and looking at her like she’s in shock.

The hotel is classy, because Lena is Lena and she has the money for it and there’s a hot tub in the room and the idea of hot water and Kara is far too appealing. She'd messaged her assistant, and Sam, and said she’s having three days off. She pays in cash for three days and Kara presses in close behind her the entire time, fingers always grazing Lena’s arm, the small of her back, her elbow. The anger is down to almost nothing, and instead need it clamouring in her vessels, pounding against in her ears and she just wants to be close. The elevator is a blur of kisses pressed against the wall and almost not getting off on their floor, the couple getting on bright red and half smirking.  
Lena couldn’t have cared less, because she can still feel Kara’s hand raking through her hair, her hips pressed flush against her, the desperate cant of them. The hitch of her own breath. The way they both just press as close as they can and Lena, somehow, even as Kara doesn’t even speak, can hear those words, the _I love you_ that sweeps over her own lips from Kara’s, against her tongue, she breathes it in in sharp breaths through her nose and if she could, she’d clamber inside this woman because three years past are stripping her bare, leaving her raw, and they’re only in the elevator.

The breathy moan in Lena’s ear, the rocking of Kara’s hips. The way the the carpet feels under Lena’s knees, sharp and burning and contrasting to the feeling building and building in her stomach. The clutch of Kara’s fingers at her shoulder blade, the way her arms fell to either side of her and her fingers gripped into the ground.

Coffee, mixed with the smell of pancakes. Three servings of them, that Kara eats only wrapped in a sheet, the sunlight falling over her shoulder from the window when night one is already past, time slipping through their fingers like water in cupped hands—you think you have it sorted, have it trapped, but then it’s gone and you’re left with nothing but damp skin and nothing more. Kara’s lips sticky with syrup and there's something bubbling in Lena’s throat, an emotion when Kara smiles at her and Lena can’t feel that, can’t verbalise it, can’t press it out of her mouth so instead she swallows it down and kisses the syrup off of Kara’s lips, who laughs, loud and reverberating in the room as Lena pushes her back into that bed and pushes the sheet away. The laugh turns breathy and Lena’s fingers splay over Kara’s ribs like they could live there, like they’re helping hold something precious in.

The stuttering conversation, and dips and falls. Kara’s lips moving against the shell of her ear as she tries to speak about Krypton, but mostly fails, like the words are trapped and there’s something too heavy there. So they talk about other things. Kara tells her about cities she's explored on days when she had nothing else to do, other countries even. The way grass under her bare feet was something she treasured, but what actually never left her was the sea on her toes, the way, she said, the little waves lapping at the shore seemed to chase themselves, like the sea was playing a game all of its own making.  
There was a longing, a wisdom, a knowledge of something Lena would never grasp in her voice and Lena presses her lips to her sternum, and let the words vibrate on her lips as well as press into her ears.

The way Kara snuffles into her pillow in the middle of the night, hair a cloud around her head and body always warm, warm, warm.

The smell of sex and passion, of softness and something tender. The feel of raking nails, of a tide that starts in her belly but ends in her fingertips. The taste of Kara, heady on her tongue the way her skin tastes when kissed by the sun, when she smears syrup over her stomach and down. The sound of Kara coming undone, of her voice and how it cracks when she first wakes up, sleep broken and heated. The sight of her, filling her vision for three days straight, the expressions that play over her face, slow and real and steady and there.

The way Kara tries not to fall asleep the final night, until Lena, a lump that could choke her in her throat, straddles her and pulls her in as tight as she can and they rock, something hard and desperate and tender in between them until she makes Kara come again, and again, and again. She finally falls asleep pressed to Lena’s side, skin sweaty and hot and leg thrown over Lena’s. And Lena just holds her close and watches as the room fills with light she wants to chase away with her own desperation.

Because the universe has moved, but it hasn’t pulled Lena with it.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and I did not like each other, hence the gap in posting. Sorry! I hope you all like it regardless :D

Leaving is not like last time, with a burning righteousness in Kara’s chest and a knowledge that it was _necessary_. This does not feel _necessary_. This feels wrong, and senseless, and Kara just wants to burrow back into the bed they’ve spent three days and pretend she is not a part of Krypton.

Those orders are heavy and they tug and tug and tug.

Her aunt gave her those orders.

The last three days are like a salve, spread over all the cracked and aching parts of herself. She can only hope it doesn’t fade. That memories will be enough to do the same when the effect goes away.

They’re both dressed and showered. Hovering in the hotel room they made their own for three days. Kara hates that she fell asleep in the end on the final night, but waking up with her limbs heavy and sated and skin to skin with Lena is something she wouldn’t trade for much of anything.

Kara pulls Lena into her, presses her forehead to hers at the door and just holds her there, breathes with her. Lets their bodies sync. And Lena will never know, but the beat in her chest slows to match Kara’s, who feels like the thump of it is going to hollow her out right there.

They kiss once, a coming together that’s soft. But when they pull away, it’s like they’re tearing themselves apart.

Kara steps back. Lena is pale, eyes the green of the grass Kara covets, of the sea in places; of forests she’s flown over just to bask in their colour, devoid on Krypton.

“I love you,” Kara says. Because she said them four days ago and meant them and she needs to say it again, ignoring how it’s unfair to both of them.

And Lena swallows so hard Kara can see the bob in her throat, and her fingers squeeze in a fist. Her lips part, almost unnoticeable, then press back together and she nods, tears spilling down her cheeks.

“Bye,” the word is torn from Kara’s throat and she turns and walks out, their linked fingers between them tugging for a second until their both let go, fingers trailing over sensitive tips, palms, grazing wrists until they fall away. Lena shuts the door, and Kara hears the thud of her back pressing to it and the way she slides down to sit on floor.

And Kara keeps walking.

Down the stairs.

Out of the hotel they haven’t left in days.

She finds somewhere discreet and she takes off so fast the cold air whips at her and she finds where she’s stashed her pod, undetectable with all its tech. She climbs in and presses the button and it’s mere moments until she’s leaving the atmosphere.

And something snaps in her chest, breaks, and that box she locked away smashes open and Sam’s story and Lena’s face, pale and blotched red, her eyes the green of new growth, are all she can see even as Earth is just a spot behind her and the universe opens up ahead.

 

* * *

 

The lab is quiet. Sam loves being here. She escapes to it during her lunch breaks, to do paperwork while Alex hovers and doesn’t say that this is all against lab regulations, which Sam _knows_ but likes to watch her get a little twitchy. She stops by when she has work easily done on her tablet so she can get out of her office. In the afternoon when she doesn’t have meetings and can use Alex’s lab computer for emails.

Sometimes, Alex sits opposite her and keeps her company for a little bit. Others, she just keeps working, easily focussed as she quints at equipment and prototypes and screens. She gets hyper focussed, eyes a little glazed and sometimes it’s hours that Sam sits there and slips her the odd granola bar and she wonders if Alex would just forget to eat if she didn’t. No, she doesn’t wonder. She knows she would.

Lena does the same thing sometimes, but Sam thinks it’s mostly laziness there. She’ll finish and go eat out, drag Sam with her, sometimes Alex too. Or she’ll come too, blinking and claiming she’s starving. Really, Sam thinks no one really taught Lena how to look after herself.

Alex just gets lost in it and will blearily stumble home and fall into bed if no one points her in the direction of food. Too trapped in the next thing she’s working in. She knows how to look after herself but simply forgets to do so.

Maybe Sam is the mom friend, which is a little embarrassing.

It’s too early for anyone else to be in. But Alex is, repairing some tech from Sam’s suit that malfunctioned the night before.

Sam taps through her emails.

“Shit.”

She looks up and Alex is glaring at the shoulder guard dismantled on the bench, smoke rising from it slowly.

“Shit fuck,” she mutters.

If Sam sits and doesn’t move, those words will all get a lot more creative.

“Fuck stick.”

She snorts, and Alex looks up, suddenly sheepish.

“You forgot I was here didn’t you?”

Red seeps into Alex's cheeks. “Maybe a little.”

“Having a problem?” Sam nods to the still slightly smouldering shoulder guard.

“Just a little. Maybe don’t slam into a wall next time.”

“Maybe if my partner watched my back…”

“That’s just rude.”

But there’s a smile on Alex’s lips as she bends back over the tech, tools in hand.

“Too bad we can’t use Lena’s lab.”

Alex pouts and something turns over in Sam’s stomach. Something light, fluttery. Something she’s not at all used to. “Tell me about it. All my equipment is there.”

“But Lena might be too. And we promised her three days.”

Alex sighs. “I know.” Something sparks and Alex drops the tools down with a huff and leans on the bench, blinking at Lena. “Is Lena okay?”

And Sam wants to tell her. She wants to tell Alex everything, all the things that aren’t hers to tell, all the suspicions and her worries. About Kara and Krypton and that sanitary, humane-as-can be torture cell. About what lurks in Sam’s DNA and about Lena’s dark looks the lasted three years. All these things that either aren’t Sam’s to tell or are things that gnaw too close to the bone to her.

But she wants to tell her. And that alone is something too big, something almost horrifying. Sam, who’s kept so much close to her chest. Who shared too much with Kara and has felt raw since, flayed, like her nerve endings are exposed and everyone can see what's under it all.

And Alex Danvers, with her doe eyes, is blinking at her and asking questions that are too big for Sam to answer.

She doesn’t want to answer it—it’s not hers to answer. But she really doesn’t want to lie to Alex, either. Which is also new.

“I don’t think I can answer that.”

It’s all honestly. The truth.

And Alex gives her that smile that makes her stomach flutter over again and nods. “Fair enough.”

Her gaze is too deep. It’s rich, almost. The brown of her eyes sometimes so dark Sam could fall into it, and others times that brown is lit up, like honey when the sun hits it. Sam blinks, and so does Alex, as if she, too, just realised they were staring at each other and that pink is back in her cheeks and she’s burying herself in fixing Sam’s shoulder guard and Sam is left wondering what she’s imagining and what really happens.

But for a moment, just a very short one, she’d thought maybe Alex had leant forward, just barely, fingertips pushing into the metal table between them.

 

* * *

 

Lena sits at her desk and lets her fingers clatter over the keys. Loses herself in it. A pattern she knows, ticking through that list she’s had building over three days.

Emails.

Reports.

Meetings in the morning.

Conference calls.

And she can do it, because she’s known pain before. She can work through this feeling. When there’s a split moment of calm, a second when she’s not immersed in a task—hanging up from a call, clicking send on an email, clearing something off her calendar—it hits her in the centre of her chest like a blow, and for a second, she almost can’t suck in a breath.

So she closes her eyes and forces herself too.

Tries not to let one of those memories she spent three hours this morning soaking in, enter her head.

She will want them, later. She will need them.

But if she thinks of Kara’s slow smile, the brush of her fingers over Lena’s jaw, the way she tastes—if she thinks of anything of that right now, she doesn’t think she can make it through the day.

And she needs to, so she can go back to her apartment and sit on the bottom of her shower with a glass of wine in reach and fall apart.

She knew what she was agreeing to.

She doesn’t regret it.

But she suddenly feels like she lost something. More so than when Kara left last time. Now, it feels like she lost the potential of something. The potential of what they had for three days with the truth laid bare and that thing, that inevitably tug that is between them still there regardless.

And some small part of her, hurt and small, just wants to shatter at the fact that Kara left her again. Orders or not, whatever Kara tells herself, she chose to leave Lena behind not just once, but twice.

So she sucks in a breath and opens her eyes and pushes all that away and moves on to the next thing on her to do list, refuses to think about Kara, lightyears away.

 

* * *

 

There’s a secret in Alex’s chest that she’s carrying around. One that’s been there forever, something sewn along her insides, tattooed into her ribs, sunk into the fibres of her muscles, in her marrow to meld with her blood.

It’s a part of her, as much as the fact that her hair is brown, and her eyes are the same, and that she goes red when in the sun for more than ten minutes, and that she lives for the nights with adrenaline pounding in her blood and would never, ever have been happy to simply work in a lab forever.

But like some things, she didn’t know that secret was there. That that part of her existed. It had always been there but she wasn’t aware and now it’s creeping out, shooting into her awareness, bit by bit, urged on by the the warmth of Sam’s smile, the heat she throws off when she stands next to her. By the sweat that covers her arms when they train, a sheen under the dull lights, just the sound of their breathing and the slap of hands hitting skin, the thwack of weapons glancing off each other. The pounding of her own heart, the rush of blood in her ears.

The solid gaze over the table in the lab when it’s so early no one else is in the building. A look so deep in Sam’s eyes Alex can see her get lost in her thoughts, lost in some history or fact that Alex can’t get close to.

That secret is working itself into the light and it’s terrifying and real and solid and everything and not something she knows how to handle.

So she doesn’t.

Her knuckles rap gently on Lena’s door and when she goes in, she can’t help but smile. They all barely go a day without seeing each other, let alone three, and now Lena is back from whatever was going on.

Lena’s returning smile is forced.

In pieces, really.

It’s not real.

She nods when Alex talks and when she ribs her a little, like they always do, Lena’s reaction is distant. Like it’s under water.

Alex flops in a chair. “Lena.”

Lena looks at her. “Alex?”

“What’s going on.”

And Lena stares at her, lips a little parted. She swallows and Alex can see her, just for a split second, her guard down, unusual for Lena, drowning in what to say.

And that moment is gone.

“I’m just behind.” Her eyes go back to her computer. “That’s all. I’ll look over the things you brought up and get them back to you by this afternoon.”

Alex stands and starts to walk away. Then stops.

She turns and walks around Lena’s desk and before Lena can even react, bends and wraps her arms around her from behind, dropping her chin on Lena’s shoulder and pulling her in as tight as she can on this awkward angle.

For a second, Lena is all tense muscles and rigidity. Then she melts into it, leaning back into Alex and turning her head so her forehead presses into Alex’s cheek.

They’ve never been the most affectionate.

That doesn’t matter right then.

Lena smells like cheap shampoo and is far too warm, and Lena pushes just a little closer. If they weren’t at work, Alex gets the feeling that Lena would shudder, that a sob is building—but they are, so Alex just pulls her in even tighter and Lena’s hand comes up, fingers wrapping around Alex’s forearm over her chest to hold her there.

The office door opens, and a second later, Sam’s arms are around both of them and then Lena does shudder a little, a juddering breath pulled in but she doesn’t break, surrounded on both sides by them both and Alex wonders if it’s just this, the pressure of her friends all around her that holds her together in that moment.

 

* * *

 

The day has been slow and too warm. Lena’s apartment feels closed in after not being there for three days, too small and too big and too unknown. The day’s passed too long and too short, as if rushing through the fact that Kara has left, yet dragging it on so Lena can just roll around in the utter misery of it.

She can’t be miserable.

She knew Kara was leaving.

She chose it.

But Kara chose to leave too.

Again.

That’s haunting her, that thought. That small, petty, miserable thought.

Lena stands in her living room and closes her eyes for a moment, wraps her arms around herself and sucks in a breath.

Her windows are open, like they always are. Lena smells like hotel soap and shampoo, and she regrets the shower that washed Kara away. A wave of grief, of drowning, of suffocating rolls over her and she presses a hand to her stomach and wonders at what she was thinking, giving herself three days after spending three years getting over it, when she knows that was all she had.

She sucks in a breath—something she feels like she’s been doing all day, leaving herself over inflated and tired and still suffocating—and raises her chin.

There’s a thump, from the balcony.

A thump that she knows.

She turns her head and straight through the window, Kara is standing, blinking at her, hair messed and flyaway and almost glowing in the night. Everything in Lena stills, just her hand clenching at her shirt.

And through the window, her voice hoarse, cracking:

“I couldn’t leave.”


End file.
